txhvavy  of  ^e  t:heolo3(cal  ^tminaxy 

PRINCETON  •  NEW  JERSEY 


PRESENTED  BY 

The  Estate   of   the 
Rev.   John  B,   V/iedincrer 


BX  7233  .G8  P35 
Gunsaulus,  Frank  Wakeley, 

1856-1921. 
Paths  to  the  city  of  God 


By    FRANK   W.    GUNSAULUS 

THIRD  EDITION 

Paths  to  Power 

i2mo.     Cloth.     $1.25,  net 

The  Outlook  : 

•'  Professor  Wilkinson  in  '  Modern  Masters  of  Pulpit 
Discourse '  classes  Dr.  Gunsaulus  with  such  men  as 
Beecher,  Brooks  and  Spurgeon.  Not  till  now,  however, 
has  Dr.  Gunsaulus  put  a  volume  of  his  discourses  into  print. 
On  reading  them  one  is  disposed  to  concede  his  right  to  the 
place  assigned  him." 

The  Independent : 

"His  knowledge  of  the  secret  of  power  has  been  gained 
by  his  vital  realization  of  power  through  strenuous  and  con- 
tinuous exertion  of  power,  and  he  furnishes  in  his  career  a 
brilliant  example  of  the  culture  and  growth  of  power." 

Homiletic  Review : 

"  These  sermons  can  only  be  classed  with  those  of  Fred- 
erick W.  Robertson,  Phillips  Brooks,  and  a  few  other 
standard  collections,  and  will  remain  as  an  enduring  addi- 
tion to  the  sermonic  literature  of  the  present  generation." 


PATHS  TO  THE 
CITY  OF  GOD 


BY 


FRANK  W.  GUNSAULUS 


New  York 


Chicago 


Toronto 


Fleming  H.  Revell   Company 

London        and         Edinburgh 


Copyright,  1906,  by 
FLEMING   H.  REVELL  COMrANIi 


New  York  :  158  Fifth  Avenue 
Chicago :  80  Wabash  Avenue 
Toronto  :  25  Richmond  Street,  W. 
London  :  21  Paternoster  Square 
Edinburgh :    100    Princes    Steeet 


TO  THE  UNFADING  MEMORY  OP 

ALICE  ADAMS  GUNSAULUS  II, 

A  LITTLE  FLOWER  WHICH  ONLY  BUDDED  IN  EDEN, 
BUT  NOW  BLOOMS  IN  THE  CITY  OP  GOD. 

Central    Church,  — F.  W.  G. 

November  i,  iyo6 


CONTENTS 


I.  The  Garden  and  the  City  . 

II.  The  River  of  Ezekiel's  Vision   . 

III.  The  River  of  John's  Vision 

IV.  The  City  Lieth  Four-square 

V.  The  Better  Things  of  Christ's  Blood 

VI.  Lessons  from  the  Rainbow^  . 

VII.  Treasures  of  the  Snow^ 

VIII,  The  Personal  Element  in  Christianity 

IX.  The  Sympathies  of  Religion  and  Art 

X.  Meditation  and  the  Religious  Life 

XI.  Action  and  the  Religious  Life  . 

XII.  Christianity  and  Woman 

XIII.  Isaiah's  Vision  of  God 

XIV.  The  Angel  Standing  in  the  Sun 

XV.  A  Good  Old  Age   .... 


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THE    GARDEN   AND   THE    CITY 

''And  the  Lord  God  planted  a  garden  eastward,  in 
Eden  ;  and  there  He  put  the  man  whom  He  had  formed. 
And  out  of  the  ground  made  the  Lord  God  to  grow  every 
tree  that  is  pleasant  to  the  sight  and  good  for  food ;  the  tree 
of  life  also  in  the  midst  of  the  garden,  and  the  tree  of  the 
knowledge  of  good  and  evil.  And  a  river  went  out  of  Eden 
to  water  the  garden."     Genesis  ii.  <?,  g,  lo, 

"  That  great  city ,  The  Holy  ferusalem,  descetiding  out  of 
heaven  from  God,  having  the  glory  of  God.  The  glory  of 
the  Lord  did  lighten  it,  and  the  Lamb  is  the  light  thereof. 
A  nd  I  saw  no  temple  therein  :  for  the  Lord  God  A  Imighty 
and  the  Lamb  are  the  temple  thereof.  And  he  showed  me  a 
pure  river  of  the  water  of  life,  clear  as  crystal,  proceeding 
out  of  the  throne  of  God  and  of  the  Lamb.  In  the  midst  of 
the  street  of  it  and  on  either  side  of  the  river  was  the  tree  of 
life."    Revelation  xxi.  and  xxii. 

THESE  verses — some  from  the  book  of  Gen- 
esis, some  from  the  book  of  the  Revela- 
tion— are  Hnes  from  the  first  and  last  cantos 
of  the  greatest  of  historical  poems,  characteristic 
stanzas  from  the  earliest  and  latest  pages  of  the 
epic  of  human  life.  Much  else  that  the  Bible  is,  it 
is  the  story  of  man's  career  under  God.  It  is  not 
less,  but  more  valuable,  as  a  record  to  be  pondered 
over  and  learned,  because  what  we  term  the  historic 
imagination  behind  and  within  is  the  Spirit  of 
eternity,  and  because  that  Spirit  has  written  its 
messages  by  human  hands,  in  such  perpetually 
growing  poetry,  that  every  prosaic  age,  as  it  comes 

9 


10     PATHS    TO    THE    CITY    OF    GOD 

along  with  its  time-spirit,  feeds  upon  its  divinely 
involved  meanings. 

The  Garden  of  Eden  behind — the  City  of  God 
before!  Between  these,  in  the  mind  of  heaven, 
man,  solitary,  yet  with  the  companionship  of  God, 
fallen  yet  sublime  with  inbreathed  destinies,  makes 
his  age-long  pathway.  It  is  to  this  conception  of 
the  meaning  of  human  life,  with  some  things  that  it 
may  suggest  as  to  the  character  of  God  and  the 
future  of  man,  that  I  invite  your  attention  in  the 
studies  which  I  am  to  offer  to  your  thought  and 
hope. 

There  is  no  such  interesting  moment  in  all  the 
early  hours  of  the  universe,  as  that,  in  which,  after 
the  thought  of  God  had  taken  form  in  created 
things,  the  great  creative  Power,  by  whom  they 
became  and  in  whom  they  continued  existent,  felt  the 
divine  thrill  of  satisfied  though  to  Him  effortless 
achievement,  and,  when,  in  the  words  of  the  ancient 
record,  "God  saw  everything  that  He  had  made  and 
behold  it  was  very  good."  Everywhere  was  the 
loveliest  peace ;  and  that  first  Sabbath  of  the  universe 
had  its  calm  center  in  the  soul  of  God.  Yet,  until 
man — anthropos — "The  upward  looking  being" — 
was  created,  that  Sabbath  must  have  shown  a 
companionless  world  to  the  Creator's  eye  of  love. 
No  free,  self-determining,  and  God-like  being  spoke 
in  the  solitudes  of  the  Infinite  God.  Nowhere,  from 
the  yet  quivering  beams  of  light,  broke  forth  a  gleam 
of  aspiration.  From  none  of  the  silvery  seas,  flashed 
an  eye  yearning  for  communion.     Out  from  the 


THE    GARDEN    AND    THE    CITY   11 

living  beings — wondrous  "syntheses  of  vital  forces" 
— which  roamed  the  fresh  fields,  or  leaped  in  vast 
oceans,  came  no  psalm  of  praise,  conscious,  intelli- 
gent, and  true.  Love,  though  it  were  divine,  must 
love — yea,  the  more  surely,  because  it  was  divine, 
must  it  have  something  to  love,  in  which  love  might 
rule.  Love  could  not  behold  so  magnificent  a 
kingdom  without  a  king  in  its  midst,  into  whose 
loving  personality  all  its  subdued  and  trained  forces 
might  come  to  service  and  to  blessing.  God  would 
not  rest,  until  the  beauteous  earth  was  a  sacred  spot 
in  Love's  domain,  where  someone  like  unto  Himself 
walked  and  reigned  by  the  power  of  Love.  Godlike 
man  must  come.  God  must  create  man  "in  His  own 
image;"  and  Adam  stood  forth  in  kingly  beauty 
upon  the  freshly  created  star,  while  the  heavens 
heard  God  Almighty  put  into  the  hands  of  humanity 
dominion  over  all  creation. 

Not  alone  does  this  old  record  tell  this  story,  but 
human  nature  has  even  yet  noble  memories  linger- 
ing in  her  ruins.  In  the  battered  minaret  and  broken 
archway  and  fallen  column  are  traces  still  of  the 
dignity  and  grandeur  which  the  castle  held  in  some 
far-away  past.  Somewhere  in  the  past  God  hath 
walked  with  this  same  humanity  of  ours  "in  the 
cool  of  the  day,  amongst  the  trees  of  the  garden." 
But  the  Bible  and  human  nature  tell  us  the  sad 
truth — man  fell.  How?  By  declining  to  live  the 
life  which  God  lived  in  him,  by  declining  to  live  and 
reign  by  the  love  of  God  who  is  love.  Behind 
humanity  is  this  Garden  of  Eden,  whose  flaming 


12     PATHS    TO    THE    CITY    OF    GOD 

sword  turning  every  way  keeps  the  way  of  the  tree 
of  life. 

You  will  notice  the  fact  that  in  the  garden  of 
Eden  there  were  two  trees,  of  special  significance, 
"the  tree  of  life,"  and  "the  tree  of  the  knowledge  of 
good  and  evil."  Eden  is  a  good  way  behind  us,  in 
time;  but  it  is  still  so  near — even  in  our  souls — 
that  none  of  us  has  thought  very  deeply  about  who 
we  are,  or  where  we  may  be,  who  has  not  seen 
dimly  in  the  history  of  the  spirit,  these  two  trees, 
from  the  one  of  which  each  of  us  has  gone  an 
unaccountable  distance — "the  tree  of  life;"  from  the 
other  of  which  we  are  yet  tasting  that  awful  fruit, 
and  finding  out  in  experience,  memorable  and  sad, 
how  bitter  to  finite  spirits  is  "the  knowledge  of 
good  and  evil."  You  see,  I  doubt  not,  some  gleam 
of  the  plain  truth  in  this  fine  poetry — more  sure  of 
being  kept  for  the  meditation  of  the  different  ages 
than  any  prosaic  statement  might  have  been. 
Says  Fichte,  truly:  "The  ancient  and  venerable 
record,  taken  altogether,  contains  the  profoundest 
and  loftiest  wisdom  and  presents  these  results  to 
which  all  philosophy  must  at  last  return."  Some- 
where and  somehow,  humanity  found  out,  in  experi- 
ence, the  difference  between  good  and  evil. 

Somewhere,  out  of  that  fearful  self-conscious- 
ness which  lies  in  self-will,  there  came  to  man  a 
knowledge  which  impelled  him  to  sew  together  the 
fig-leaves  that  he  might  be  concealed.  A  dreadful 
self-consciousness  had  come.  Of  something,  man 
has  eaten  which  has  made  impossible  that  trustful 


THE    GARDEN    AND    THE    CITY    13 

and  sweet  innocence,  in  which  humanity  saw  all 
things  through  the  life  of  God  in  the  soul,  in  which 
it  knew  not  this  awful  contrast  between  good  and 
evil,  right  and  wrong.  Innocence  is  only  historic. 
Somewhere,  there  has  been  a  fall  in  Adam.  Some- 
where— O !  we  know  it  so  unquestionably ! — the 
simple,  trustful  eating  of  "the  tree  of  life,"  by  the 
love  of  God,  the  uninquiring  living  of  life  by  God's 
life  in  humanity  was  declined.  Man  felt  that  he 
must  know  for  himself,  that  it  was  not  enough  for 
God  to  know  for  him.  He  was  not  content  to  be 
innocent  and  to  take  God's  universe  on  trust,  think- 
ing it  good  because  God  gave  it  to  him.  He  was 
haunted  by  the  self-consciousness  which  Hkes  to  live 
by  its  own  wits,  and  yielding,  he  tasted  for  himself 
of  "the  tree  of  the  knowledge  of  good  and  evil." 
Human  experience  had  lost  its  trust,  its  innocence — 
it  had  upon  its  trembling  lips  the  taste  of  knowledge 
of  good  and  evil ;  it  had  lost  the  Tree  of  Life. 

Of  course,  after  this,  Eden  was  without  its 
inhabitant,  and  in  the  deepest  hours  which  each 
thoughtful  mind  has,  there  have  been  repeated  in  the 
very  soul,  in  this  perplexed,  conscious  life  of  effort 
and  failure,  the  sad  footfalls  of  the  expelled  Adam 
and  Eve. 

"The  world  was  all  before  them,  where  to  choose 
Their  place  of  rest  and  Providence  their  guide! 
They,  hand  in  hand,  with  wandering  steps  and  slow, 
Through  Eden  took  their  solitary  way." 

Man  fallen!  Man,  for  whom  the  processes  of 
creation  had  worked  with  all  their  wondrous  move- 


14     PATHS    TO    THE    CITY    OF    GOD 

ment  and  high-wrought  prophecy!  Man,  who  was 
to  encircle  all  these  shining  achievements  of  God, 
with  the  regency  of  his  own  God-like  will  and  love ! 
Man,  who  was  thus  to  develop  into  greater  God- 
likeness,  by  living  the  life  which  God  would  live  in 
him,  growing  strong  and  true  with  the  sympathies 
and  society  of  the  Infinite  through  the  happy 
eternity  of  Eden !  Man,  persisting  in  choosing  not 
the  trustful  life  of  the  soul  in  God,  but  rather  the 
trustless,  contriving,  and  self-conscious  life  apart 
from  the  divine  life!  Man,  fallen  in  Eden  from 
innocence  into  sin,  by  self-will — this  sad  picture 
we  must  ever  remember  of  his  state,  if  we  are  to  look 
intelligently  into  the  problem  of  his  redemption. 

Marvelous  is  the  sweep  of  thought  in  these 
poetic  words  of  Genesis  about  the  Garden.  They 
leave  us  with  the  Garden  of  Eden  behind  the  trust- 
less self-willed  inhabitant.  But  God  is  still  God! — 
and  God  is  Love.  Man  is  yet  God's  child.  The 
star  which  He  made  for  man,  even  though  turned 
into  a  place  of  sorrow  by  man's  sin,  still  has  a  place 
for  his  wandering  foot,  and  outside  the  garden  still 
has  its  sad  ministries  unto  him.  To  that  star  and  to 
that  unpitied,  throneless,  king  humanity,  the  pitiful 
God  will  surely  come,  in  some  revelation  of  Himself 
which  will  destroy  self-will  and  yet  make  man 
willing  to  live,  as  by  his  constitution  he  only  can  live, 
by  TRUST^  by  the  life  of  God  in  him. 
,  God  Himself  gave  man  the  dreadful  attribute 
of  freedom.  With  all  his  freedom,  from  all  the 
bondage  into  which  he  has  freely  put  himself,  man 


THE    GARDEN    AND    THE    CITY    15 

must  be  saved.  God  freely  loves  humanity;  man 
shall  freely  love  God.  Eden  is  gone;  but  God  and 
His  trustless,  sin-cursed  child  are  still  here. 

Now,  how  shall  Love  win  and  yet  preserve  in- 
violate this  self-determining  spirit  who  has  lost  his 
Eden?  By  persuading  man  back  into  Eden?  No. 
With  God,  this  is  impossible.  Eden  was  innocence, 
and  innocence  cannot  be  regained.  That  is  one  of 
the  falsities — that  a  man  who  has  left  innocence 
can  ever  be  innocent  again — which  lies  at  the  root 
of  too  many  theories  of  atonement.  All  our  singing 
about  the  future  of  the  redeemed  as  the  "Beautiful 
Valley  of  Eden"  is  wide  of  the  mark.  Eden  is 
gone,  once  and  forever.  In  it  stood  the  tree  of 
life — and  of  both  the  garden  and  tree  man  seemed 
to  have  a  last  vision  when,  in  the  words  of  the 
ancient  story,  "God  drove  out  the  man;  and  He 
placed  at  the  east  of  the  garden  of  Eden,  Cherubim, 
and  a  flaming  sword  which  turned  every  way," — 
for  what? — "to  keep  the  way  of  the  tree  of  life." 

Yes ;  that  tree  of  life  must  be  preserved.  Neither 
God  or  man  can  do  without  it.  Man  has  gone 
wrong. 

But  man  must  eat  of  the  fruit  of  that  tree  of 
life  if  he  as  God's  child,  bearing  His  image,  is  to  live 
at  all.  Somewhere,  he  must  live  by  the  life  of  God 
in  him — by  simple  trust.  He  cannt)t  go  back  to  it. 
No  man  has  ever  recovered  his  innocence.  The 
Garden  of  Eden  is  closed;  he  is  expelled.  He  is 
sent  out  to  dig  and  toil  in  the  wide  earth,  under  the 
smitten  sun  and  the  tearful  stars.    So  much  for  what 


16     PATHS    TO    THE    CITY    OF    GOD 

is  behind  him.  Is  this  all?  Is  man  doomed?  Is 
God  to  fail?  Is  there  nothing  for  humanity  but  a 
lost  Eden  behind  ?  What  is  before  ?  Eden's  silence 
has  been  startled  by  the  promise,  "The  seed  of  the 
woman  shall  bruise  the  Serpent's  head,"  and  afar 
yonder  is  John  dreaming  of  destiny:  "And  I  saw 
the  holy  city,  New  Jerusalem,"  "and  a  river  of  the 
water  of  life  proceeding  out  of  the  throne  of  God 
and  of  the  Lamb.  In  the  midst  of  the  street  of  it 
and  on  either  side  of  the  river  was  there  the  tree 
of  life."  "The  city  of  God."  "And  the  nations  of 
them  which  are  saved  shall  walk  in  the  light  of  it." 
"The  Lamb  is  the  light  thereof."  Surely  God  is 
love.  Surely  "God  hath  commended  his  love  toward 
us." 

There  was  a  tender  melody  in  the  sweet  Eden 
now  lost.  But  here  is  the  higher  music  from  re- 
solved discords.  Redemption  strikes  more  compel- 
ling harmonies  than  creation. 

I  think  it  needs  not — at  this  time  and  here — that 
I  should  stop  to  urge  the  measureless  contrast  of 
these  two — the  first  and  last  hours  of  human  history. 
Certainly,  also,  the  identity  of  those  factors,  which 
combine  to  make  both  Eden  and  the  Holy  City 
supremely  blest  to  our  aspiring  thought,  is  at  least 
impressive.  One  is  a  Garden  of  Innocence — the 
other  a  City  of  Holiness;  in  both  stands  "the  tree 
of  life."  Both  are  watered  by  "a  river,"  In  one 
the  river  flows  out  of  Eden  to  water  the  garden;  in 
the  other  it  flows  out  from  the  throne  of  God  and  of 
the  Lamb. 


THE    GARDEN    AND    THE    CITY    17 

The  best  that  God  could  do  for  his  child,  in  the 
beginning,  was  to  give  him  a  garden,  with  its  simple 
naturalism,  for  his  dwelling  place  and  opportunity. 
The  best  that  God  could  do  for  man,  since  the 
tragedy  which  closed  with  his  expulsion  from  this 
happy  place,  is  to  redeem  him,  by  so  penetrative 
and  comprehensive  a  process  of  Divine  self-revela- 
tion as  to  prepare  him  for  something  so  much  more 
lofty,  as  is  a  city,  not  of  negative  innocence  but  of 
positive  holiness — full  of  complex  and  many-sided 
life,  with  a  destiny  in  which  the  power  and  wealth 
of  each  is  the  possession  of  all — a  Heavenly  City, 
The  vision  of  this  city  is  to  recreate  the  earth  and 
make  its  destiny  so  deep  and  true  that 

"  Then  shall  each  man's  good 
Be  each  man's  rule  and  universal  peace 
Lie  like  a  shaft  of  light  across  the  land, 
And  like  a  lane  of  beams  athwart  the  sea, 
Throughout  the  circle  of  the  golden  year." 

It  is  a  city  the  very  dream  of  which  makes 
prophets  and  reformers,  and  stirs  the  least  respon- 
sive soul  to  an  unrest  which  knows  no  peace  until  it 
has  been  his 

"  To  have  struck  some  blow  for  right 

With  tongue  or  pen  ; 
To  have  smoothed  the  path  to  light 

For  wandering  men. 
To  have  chased  some  fiend  of  ill  array  ; 
A  little  backward  to  have  thrust 
The  instant  power  of  Drink  and  Lust ; 
To  have  borne  down  Giant  Despair, 
To  have  dealt  a  blow  at  Care." 


18     PATHS    TO    THE    CITY    OF    GOD 

— a  city  the  possibility  of  whose  existence,  gilding 
the  clouds  here  and  there,  has  made  a  St.  Francis 
to  sing,  as  he  battled  for  righteousness : 

"  Love  sets  my  heart  on  fire  ! 
Love  sets  my  heart  on  fire, 
When  thus  with  Christ  I  fought 

Peace  made  we  after  ire! 
For  first  from  him  was  brought 

Such  strength  I  cannot  tire. 
He  dwells  in  soul  and  thought, 

Love  sets  my  heart  on  fire," 

Deeper  than  Eden  could  ever  suggest  was  the 
love  of  God ;  and  more  true  than  any  lost 

"  Smiling  table-lands 
To  which  our  God  himself  is  sun  and  moon  " 

were  the  possibilities  of  man  in  that  love. 

When  the  first  Adam,  out  of  his  self-conscious- 
ness, reached  out  his  hand  and  severed  the  bond  of 
communion  between  himself  and  God,  by  his  unlov- 
ing disobedience,  this  dreadful  attribute  of  human 
freedom  wrongfully  asserted  itself.  Sin  was  in  the 
world;  and  the  possibility  of  ever  bringing  man  to 
his  loftiest  self  in  any  Eden,  faded  away.  Then  Love 
knew  that  the  hour  for  self-sacrifice — its  own  most 
characteristic  self-revelation — had  come.  It  was  not 
any  new  Love  which  was  needed  to  redeem.  "The 
Lamb  slain  from  the  foundation  of  the  world"  stood 
ready.  But  man  had  fallen,  and  he  must  be  dealt 
with,  not  by  visions  far  beyond  his  spiritual  under- 
standing.    God  must  reveal  Himself,  not  only  by 


THE    GARDEN    AND    THE    CITY    19 

facts  and  events  which  were  to  proceed  from  Him, 
but  also  by  facts  and  events  which  would  touch  man 
as  he  was  humiliated,  fallen,  and  so  rouse  him  into 
loyalty  to  the  government  of  God. 

Any  view  of  inspiration  which  misses  this,  has 
little  understanding  of  the  divine  or  the  human, 

"The  second  Adam"  was  to  be  Love's  complete 
self-revelation  and  that  would  involve  incarnation. 
Love's  complete  revelation  would  be  in  self-sacrifice, 
in  Love's  own  person.  The  Slain  Lamb  must  be 
"the  light"  of  the  city  of  God. 

But  what  is  the  characteristic  of  this  city?  It  is 
a  "holy  city" — a  city  of  holiness,  not  of  innocence — 
a  city  with  a  river  like  that  in  Eden,  watering  the 
Tree  of  Life  which  was  lost  with  innocence,  but 
unhke  that,  a  river  flowing  out  of  the  throne 
OF  God  and  of  the  Lamb.  Innocence  in  the  first 
Adam  is  impossible;  holiness  in  the  second  Adam 
is  possible  and  promised. 

Between  that  first  Adam  by  whom  all  was  lost, 
and  that  second  Adam  by  whom  more  was  gained, 
is  this  enormous  spiritual  distance,  a  distance  over 
every  foot  of  which,  God,  by  revelation  after  revela- 
tion, must  lead  the  human  soul,  until,  unto  its  trained 
vision.  He  may  reveal  Himself  in  Christ,  Innocence 
having  been  lost,  holiness  is  the  only  worthy  goal 
which  lies  before  him — the  only  possible  land  of  the 
ideal  in  all  the  universe  where  grows  for  him  the 
Tree  of  Life.  Therefore,  God,  who  would  have 
man  God-like,  reveals  Himself  to  man  as  the  eternal 
Righteousness,  the  supreme  Holiness.    Let  us  now 


20    PATHS    TO    THE    CITY    OF    GOD 

content  ourselves  with  emphasizing  the  character- 
istics of  that  future  to  which  fallen  man  may  look. 

First,  it  is  holy.  The  word  of  God  soon  rings 
forth  throughout  the  avenues  of  human  life :  "Be 
ye  holy,  for  I  am  holy."  Mark  the  difference 
between  the  city  of  holiness  before,  and  the  garden 
of  innocence  behind  humanity.  Innocence  is  nega- 
tive; holiness  is  positive.  Innocence  for  man  is 
stainlessness;  holiness  is  the  aggressive  light  burst- 
ing through  the  darkness  and  conquering  midnight. 
To  be  innocent  is  to  live  amidst  the  flowers  of  a 
garden;  to  be  holy  means  to  be  a  citizen  of  a  city  of 
God.  To  be  innocent  means  to  live  so  that  no  evil 
shall  enter  into  the  still  waters  of  the  soul;  to  be  holy 
means  that  they  "shall  be  always  pure  because  never 
still,"  and  that  on  their  moving  bosom  shall  ride  the 
argosies  of  hope  and  the  convoys  of  aspiration.  To 
return  to  innocence  would  be  to  go  back  to  a  purely 
personal  life;  to  be  holy  is  to  see  the  eternal  right 
as  the  heritage  of  every  man  and  to  carry  it  in 
storm  and  battle  to  the  wronged  of  every  race  and 
every  time.  Innocence  is  Individualism.  Holiness 
is  true  Socialism.  Not  that  innocence  may  not  be 
developed  into  holiness,  as  the  innocent  human 
childhood  of  the  Redeemer  grew  into  the  holiness 
of  that  manhood  which  makes  the  city  of  God  a 
fact,  not  a  dream.  From  the  divine  side,  He  was 
ever  "the  Holy  Child  Jesus."  But  such  holiness 
comes  to  us,  by  conflict,  in  His  name,  by  His  power, 
Adam,  at  his  best,  was  no  Christian  saint.  Sainthood 
means  the  stainless  silver  purified  by  fire.    Holiness 


THE    GARDEN    AND    THE    CITY    21 

with  its  city — not  a  garden — is  greater  than  inno- 
cence with  its  fruit  ripening  in  the  rich  sunhght  and 
its  streams  singing  throughout  the  golden  day. 

Secondly,  then,  the  destiny  of  man  means  "a 
city  of  God."  In  all  the  highest  visions,  the  soul  has 
caught  sight  of  a  coming  society.  The  ancient 
radical,  to  whom  God's  voice  came  and  to  whom 
holiness  was  a  dominant  idea,  saw  it  dimly  under 
the  stars  of  Chaldea  and  on  the  plains  of  Mamre. 
When  Abraham  trembled,  the  Supreme  Holiness 
said :  "Fear  not,  I  am  thy  shield  and  thine  exceeding 
great  reward,"  and  so  truly  did  this  Holiness  lift 
him  up  into  its  own  life  that  Paul  describes  him 
looking  "for  a  city  which  hath  foundations,  whose 
builder  and  maker  was  God."  Sometimes  earth 
alone  has  seemed  to  be  the  resting  place  of  this 
mighty  social  organization.  Plato's  Republic  was 
the  echo  of  divine  speech  in  the  land  of  philosophy; 
the  echo  of  that  same  voice  which  in  Paul  had 
distinct  utterance:  "Here  we  have  no  continuing 
city,  but  seek  one  to  come."  Every  Roman  law  and 
statute  of  Egypt  felt  the  breath  of  this  high  hope; 
but  to  every  law  came  the  announcement  in  whose 
very  presence  Moses  seemed  to  stand  midst  the 
thunder  and  lightning  of  Sinai :  "Ye  are  not  come 
into  the  mount  that  might  be  touched  and  that 
burned  with  fire,  but  ye  are  come  into  Mount  Zion, 
and  unto  the  city  of  the  living  God,  the  heavenly 
Jerusalem."  Augustine  fled  from  dissolving  Rome, 
not  back  to  the  naturalism  of  Eden  but  to  his 
imagined  city  of  God;  and  Sir  Thomas  More,  in 


22     PATHS    TO    THE    CITY    OF    GOD 

the  hour  when  he  had  forgotten  the  supremacy  of 
kings  and  when  he  revived  the  academy  of  Plato, 
mused  hke  the  old  Greek  upon  the  society  to  come. 
This  feeling  for  a  city  is  the  response  of  the  human 
soul  unto  the  native  socialism  within  the  forces 
by  which  God  has  been  redeeming  men.  No  most 
narrow  Jew  could  help  but  feel  that  the  Supreme 
Holiness  was  not  his,  but  the  heritage  of  every  man 
who  touched  him.  The  heavens  began  to  bend  over 
humanity,  in  the  thought  of  early  days.  The  human 
soul  has  always  dimly  seen  the  truth  which  Mrs. 
Browning  utters:  "How,  when  we  get  the  truth, 
we  feel  that  it  is  not  our  own  and  pass  it  on."  This 
inherent  socialism  in  God's  Holiness  made  the 
nation,  and  exiled  Ishmaelism,  True  it  was  not  a 
complete  victory  which  it  had,  but  it  was  one  step, 
leading  on  to  the  conception  of  the  city  of  God. 

Thirdly,  as  this  city  is  an  ultimatum — a  thing 
which  did  not  get  its  complete  statement  until  the 
Christian  Spirit  came — so  the  supreme  light  in  it  is 
the  light  of  "the  Lord  God  Almighty  and  the 
Lamb."  Enough  has  been  said  of  the  fall  by  self- 
will  to  show  us  that  man  must  rise  by  self-sacrifice. 
To  grow  this  passion  within  him  were  all  the 
sacrifices  to  which  God  led  him  in  his  weary  history. 
More  and  more  nearly  did  God  reveal  Himself 
unto  man,  until  in  the  self-sacrifice  of  Calvary,  the 
heart  of  man  was  taken  and  God's  self-sacrifice 
began  the  life  of  self-sacrifice  in  humanity.  "The 
glory  of  God  and  of  the  Lamb  is  the  light  thereof." 
Enough  has  been  said  of  the  city — its  divine  social- 


THE    GARDEN    AND    THE    CITY    23 

ism — to  show  that  to  reach  it  each  man  must  begin 
to  hve  for  others,  that  his  whole  Hfe  must  be  a  Hfe 
of  meekness  and  burden-bearing.  God  through  the 
ages  revealed  Himself  as  the  bearer  of  man's  burdens 
and  by  this  revelation  lifted  men  slowly  to  a  life  of 
mutual  helpfulness,  until  at  last  in  the  sin-bearer, 
he  disclosed  Himself  as  the  victim  of  Calvary.  The 
future  social  organization  after  that,  could  have  no 
other  light  but  that  of  the  glory  of  God  in  the  slain 
Lamb.  Enough  has  been  said  of  holiness  in  man — 
of  sainthood — to  show  that  the  city  of  God  will  be 
inhabited — if  it  is  the  Holy  City — by  those  who 
have  met  with  foes  and  vanquished  them,  by  those 
who  have  known  the  cross  before  they  saw  the 
crown.  I  look  into  John's  vision  and  hear  the 
unuttered  philosophy  of  spiritual  power,  as  the  re- 
deemed come  home.  "And  one  of  the  elders  said 
unto  me,  what  are  these  which  are  arrayed  in  white 
robes?  And  whence  came  they?  And  I  said  unto 
him.  Sir,  thou  knowest.  And  he  said  unto  me: 
These  are  they  which  came  out  of  great  tribulation 
and  have  washed  their  robes  and  made  them  white  in 
the  blood  of  the  Lamb."  Surely,  the  glory  of  God 
and  of  the  Lamb  must  be  the  light  thereof. 

The  first  Adam  was  a  self-willed  and  trustless 
child.  The  second  Adam  is  the  slain  Lamb.  The 
head  of  humanity  manifests  self-will  or  self-sacrifice 
— with  the  first  innocence  is  lost,  with  the  second 
holiness  is  gained.  Through  the  disobedience  of  the 
first  Adam  came  exile  from  the  garden,  through 
the  perfect  obedience  of  Christ,  honoring  the  law 


24     PATHS    TO    THE    CITY    OF    GOD 

which  Adam  had  broken  and  touching  human  life 
with  the  secret  power  of  the  sacrifice  in  which  it 
was  honored,  came  entrance  unto  the  city,  and 
access  to  the  old  "Tree  of  Life."  A  divine  man- 
hood, then,  seems  the  possibility  of  every  soul  in 
Christ  Jesus — the  Second  Adam.  He  comes  with 
His  city.  He  is  full  of  tender  sympathy  and  heroic 
affection  for  the  weak.  He  puts  a  spirit  into  the 
world,  so  harsh  and  cruel,  which  lets  no  human 
soul  be  content  so  long  as  its  power  can  save  or 
help.  In  Him,  God  reveals  Himself  and  gathers  up 
all  processes  of  election  in  this  chosen  one.  The 
Divine  Love  in  Christ  has  human  hands  and  a 
human  heart.  By  it  coAies  a  "mighty  working 
whereby  He  is  able  to  subdue  all  things  unto  Him- 
self." This  sense  of  Christian  brotherhood  which 
He  gives  is  the  "coming  down  out  of  heaven"  of  the 
city  of  God.  Slowly,  surely  does  it  come  in  every 
noble  dream.  It  waits  to  be  embodied  in  some  step 
of  the  conquering  soul  of  man.  First,  the  new 
heavens,  then  the  new  earth.  Vision,  then  action. 
Men  are  like  colonists  who  have  now  and  then 
granted  unto  them  a  vision  of  how  things  ought  to  be 
in  the  land  ideal,  in  the  land  of  which  they  hear 
from  beyond.  By  and  by,  they  leave  for  the  new 
shore  and  when  they  get  thereto,  the  reality  comes 
out  of  them  to  meet  the  reality  which  ever  hath 
been  there.  So  by  His  spirit,  we  put  into  our 
hearts  the  idea  of  the  brotherhood  of  man  under 
God,  in  Christ  Jesus.  It  organizes  and  reorganizes 
the  future.    We  give  that  part  of  the  down-coming 


THE    GARDEN    AND    THE    CITY    25 

heavenly  city  place  in  our  hearts.  Then  we  take 
into  our  souls  the  power  of  self-sacrifice,  the  love 
of  truth,  the  love  of  God.  We  begin  to  feel  that 
society  about  us  ought  to  be  bound  together  by 
unselfish  interests — by  love.  So  a  Mazzini  pleads 
for  a  righteousness  on  earth,  and  a  Florence  Night- 
ingale says :  "The  kingdom  of  heaven  is  within,  but 
we  must  also  make  it  without;"  and  when  these  die, 
they  go  home.  Their  hearts  know  the  city — in  fact 
they  bring  the  city  in  them  to  the  city  whose  policy 
and  law  have  prepared  them  as  they  obeyed. 
Citizens  of  the  New  Jerusalem,  fellow  citizens  with 
the  saints  all  through  the  days  of  their  hope  and 
labor  below !  Having  been  thus  true  to  the  city, 
"our  citizenship  is  in  heaven"  while  we  live;  and, 
when  we  die,  we  enter  in,  "to  go  out  no  more  for- 
ever." 

May  God  prepare  us  for  this  great  life,  for  this 
coming  body  politic,  for  this  great  city,  with  its 
involved,  complex  life  of  one  soul  with  many,  each 
laboring  for  love's  sake,  every  elect  soul  elect  for 
the  service  of  humanity,  the  universal  interest  in- 
spiring all,  each  man's  life  the  broader  and  richer 
for  the  life  of  every  one.  And  let  us  know  that  the 
only  way  to  be  prepared  for  it  by  and  by,  is  to  work 
for  its  realization  here  and  now.  Thus  shall  we 
make  earth  bear  the  features  of  heaven,  and  the 
city  of  God,  having  come  down,  will  some  day- 
have  her  long  avenues  stretching  from  the  sites  of 
our  lost  Edens  here  below  unto  the  Great  White 
Throne. 


II 

THE   RIVER   OF   EZEKIEL'S   VISION 

'^*  And  behold  waters  issued  out  fro7n  under  the  thresh- 
old of  the  house." 

''A7td  everything  shall  live  whither  the  river  cometh." 
Ezekiel  xlvii.  /,  g. 

THERE  is  always  something  poetic  in  the  true 
priest,  and  something  priestly  in  the  true 
poet.  It  is  impossible  for  him  who  stands 
effectively  between  the  questioning  of  man  and  the 
knowledge  of  God,  between  the  deep  sad  cry  of  the 
human  and  the  wondrous  response  of  the  Divine,  to 
escape  wholly  that  exaltation  within  himself,  of  the 
real  into  the  ideal,  that  uplifting  of  the  finite  into 
the  infinite.  To  give  any  account  of  this  experience, 
in  words  utterable  to  his  fellow  mortals,  is  to 
write  poetry.  Its  whole  message  must  ever  tran- 
scend the  realities  with  which  the  reason  and 
logic  plod  along;  and  it  must  speak  to  the  imagi- 
nation, "the  vision  and  faculty  divine,"  with  a 
language  which  it  chooses,  because  it  has  no  ade- 
quate power  of  expression  in  prose.  Thus  the 
priest  becomes  poet.  On  the  other  hand,  it  is 
impossible  for  an  enraptured  spirit,  which  has,  by 
some  winged  flight,  escaped  from  the  region  where 
mysteries  are  unnatural,  into  the  region  where  they 
are  natural  and  helpful,  to  be  true  to  these  which  are 
not  less  real  than  the  well-catalogued  facts  behind 

26 


RIVER    OF    EZEKIEL'S    VISION     27 

it,  to  be  true  to  its  power  of  vision  "in  rare  atmos- 
pheres," and  not  to  feel  that  the  truth  so  freshly 
seen  can  by  no  means  be  called  its  own,  and  that  it, 
therefore,  stands  in  some  very  sacred  relation  unto 
this  truth,  and  unto  the  souls  of  men.  Thus  the 
poet  becomes  priest, 

Ezekiel,  like  John,  like  Dante,  was  an  exile. 
Like  the  sad  Florentine,  he  extracted  the  sweetest 
honey  from  flowers  which  grew  along  the  rough 
ways  of  sorrow,  or  the  tearful  paths  of  solitude. 
Amidst  the  splendid  and  lurid  pictures  which  his 
heaven-taught  fancy  has  left  for  us,  none  binds  him 
more  surely  to  the  society  of  the  greatest  poets  than 
this.  Often  has  he  been  compared  to  the  Greek 
^schylus  and  to  the  English  Milton;  but  such  a 
vision  as  this,  with  its  ethical  teaching,  is  testimony 
that  the  Hebrew  genius  was  conversant  with  the 
imperial  fact  of  righteousness  as  never  was  the 
Hellenic;  and  the  practical  service  of  the  ancient 
Jew  is  evidence  that  even  the  blind  old  Englishman, 
the  friend  of  Cromwell  and  the  poet  of  a  theology, 
could  not  at  once  interpret  the  silent  heavens  above 
and  the  noisy  earth  around  him,  as  did  he. 

Ezekiel's  value  to  us,  in  this  study,  lies,  first,  in 
the  fact  that  his  vision  occurs  at  an  interesting  point 
in  the  long  distance  between  the  vanished  garden 
and  John's  dream  of  the  holy  city,  and  that  it  is  a 
vision  of  such  a  sort  as  exhibits  the  mighty  advance 
which  God  had  made  with  man's  hope,  the  motive 
power  also  by  which  it  was  accomplished,  and  the 
weary  march  yet  to  be  made  before  the  Patmos 


28     PATHS    TO    THE    CITY    OF    GOD 

dreamer  may  speak.  It  is  a  scene  out  of  the  struggle 
of  humanity,  long  after  Eden  has  been  lost;  long 
before  the  city  comes  in  sight.  Man  is  going  upward 
and  onward  toward  something;  this  is  what  Ezeki- 
el's  vision  teaches. 

It  is  a  picture  of  an  efficient  moral  motive  power 
for  man's  life.  But  that  moral  motive  power  is  not 
sufficient.  Let  us  study  its  efficiency.  It  is  far  be- 
yond any  other  in  its  approach  to  adequacy,  save 
that  which  has  behind  it  the  throne  of  God  and  the 
Lamb.  Let  us  first  permit  the  most  nearly  Grecian 
of  our  recent  molders  of  religious  ideas  and  ideals 
to  lead  us  into  the  appreciation  of  the  moral  motive 
power  of  the  Hebrew  Temple. 

Matthew  Arnold  excellently  says :  "Pindar  may 
have  lofty  passages  about  the  end  and  God-given 
beginning  of  man's  life.  Socrates  and  Plato  may 
have  their  minds  still  bent  on  those  ideas  of  moral 
order  and  of  right  which  were  the  treasure  of  the 
primitive  and  serious  tribes  of  early  Hellas.  They 
may  harp  still  upon  the  old-fashioned  doctrines 
recommended  from  the  temple  at  Delphi.  Yet,  if 
the  Greek  nation  and  its  religion  have  taken 
quite  another  line,  these  utterances  of  philosophers 
and  poets  will  not  justify  us  in  saying  that  the 
religion  of  Greece  was  a  religion  of  righteousness. 
But  we  have  a  right  to  give  Israel  the  benefit  of  the 
utterance  of  its  prophets  and  psalmists.  And  why  ? 
Because  the  nation  adopted  them.  So  powerfully 
did  the  inmost  chords  of  its  being  vibrate  to  them, 
so  entirely  were  they  the  very  truths  it  was  born 


RIVER    OF    EZEKIEL'S    VISION     29 

to  and  sought  to  find  utterance  for,  that  it  adopted 
them,  made  them  its  standards,  the  documents  of 
the  most  profound  and  authentic  expression  of  the 
national  consciousness,  its  rehgion.  Instead  of 
remaining  Hterature  and  philosophy,  isolated  voices 
of  sublime  poets  and  reforming  free  thinkers,  these 
glorifications  of  righteousness  became  Jewish  re- 
ligion, written  to  be  read  in  the  synagogue  every 
Sabbath  day.  So  that,  while  in  Greece  it  was  a 
religious  solemnity  to  behold  a  courtesan  enter  the 
sea,  in  Judea  it  was  a  religious  solemnity  to  hear  that 
the  'righteous  eternal  loveth  righteousness.'  " 

In  Ezekiel's  vision,  we  have  immediately  behind 
us  the  fallen  city  of  Jerusalem  and  the  profound 
sorrow  of  the  poet-priest.  Like  the  tears  of  every 
farsighted  seer,  his  weeping  seems  to  have  cleansed 
his  eye  for  a  sweeping  vision — a  vision  which 
presents  the  pathetic  ruins  of  his  city  being  trans- 
formed into  a  suggestive  picture  of  a  brilliant  future. 
Noble  indeed  do  its  prospects  become,  as  the  strains 
of  this  exile-prophet  float  like  music  over  the  lurid 
pile.  The  wreck  seems  complete.  Of  course,  Solo- 
mon's temple  has  gone;  but  God  and  humanity, 
narrowly  as  Ezekiel  saw  them,  were  still  left;  and, 
in  the  very  center  of  his  inspiring  picture,  is  a 
larger  Temple  whose  every  characteristic  shows  the 
progress  of  the  human  spirit  under  the  widening 
revelation  of  God,  a  temple  around  which  are  shouts 
of  triumph,  and  afar  away  from  which  stretch,  on 
every  side,  the  lands  of  the  twelve  tribes.  It  is 
impossible  not  to  be  struck  with  the  likeness  of  this 


30     PATHS    TO    THE    CITY    OF    GOD 

picture  unto  the  nobler  one,  so  many  centuries  fur- 
ther on,  toward  which  this  was  so  signal  an  ad- 
vance— the  vision  of  the  heavenly  city  which  came 
to  John,  who  was  so  like  Ezekiel  in  his  poetic  quality 
and  fervor.  But  there  is  a  mighty  difference  also. 
Ezekiel,  a  long  way  from  lost  Eden,  a  prophet  living 
in  the  midst  of  man's  struggle  and  hope,  sees  a 
temple  in  the  midst  of  a  great  rich  territory,  as  the 
embodiment  of  God's  own  interest  in  men  and  of 
man's  best  desires  and  yearnings;  John,  seven  hun- 
dred years  still  farther  on,  has  got  the  idea  of  a 
divine  socialism,  and  he  sees  a  city,  instead  of  a 
beautiful  country;  and  he  beholds  not  a  temple 
therein,  but  a  throne. 

Each  poet,  with  varying  perspective,  was  seek- 
ing to  tell  the  story  of  the  coming  time.  Another 
seven  centuries  which  roll  between  only  make  more 
inspiring  the  great  truth  of  which  both  had  a  vision. 
Ezekiel,  standing  midway  between  the  vanished 
Garden  of  Eden  and  John's  dream  of  the  holy  city, 
had  not  learned  tlie  conception  of  humanity  which 
John  learned  from  the  Christ,  as  the  apostle-seer 
leaned  upon  His  bosom.  Still,  while  Ezekiel  pon- 
dered and  spoke,  the  lofty  teachings,  which  the  temple 
had  enshrined  for  so  long,  needed  to  be  continued 
unto  man.  By  and  by,  when  it  was  the  hour  for  man 
to  learn  that  God's  real  temple  is  humanity, — by  and 
by,  when  the  moment  came  that  the  sacred  and 
secular  should  be  made  one  in  a  Divine  life  lived 
upon  earth,  the  very  One,  who,  in  Himself  must 
teach  these  truths,  would  by  His  death  rend  "the 


RIVER    OF    EZEKIEL'S    VISION     31 

veil  of  the  temple  in  twain  from  the  top  to  the 
bottom."  But  that  hour  had  not  yet  come.  For 
years  yet,  the  prophet  who  would  speak  to  the  soul 
of  man  must  use  the  symbolism  of  the  holy  house  of 
God.  And  so,  Ezekiel  creates  his  paradise,  full  of 
rustic  simplicity  and  high  promise,  right  there  in 
that  described  region,  barren  of  harvests  and  fruit- 
less. But  it  shall  not  remain  a  waste.  A  river  once 
ran  from  Eden  out  into  the  garden  to  water  it. 
Away  in  an  age  to  be,  in  John's  vision,  a  river  runs 
from  beneath  the  throne  of  God  and  of  the  Lamb, 
to  inspire  and  refresh  the  trees  in  the  city  of  God; 
so  here,  from  beneath  the  temple  of  Ezekiel,  where 
God's  honor  dwelleth,  comes  a  stream  which  widens 
into  a  river  and  which  makes  the  desert  a  place  of 
luxuriant  growth  and  the  waste  a  bower  of  beauty — 
a  river  which  empties  its  crystal  purity  into  the 
Dead  Sea,  salt  and  lifeless,  and,  as  its  sweetness 
and  life  enter  into  its  bitterness  and  death,  the  trans- 
formation is  complete ;  the  sea  is  full  of  life,  and  each 
drop  of  the  current,  as  it  moves  along,  carries  the 
prophecy:  "Everything  shall  live  whither  the  river 
Cometh." 

Let  us  stop  by  this  river,  this  morning,  long 
enough  to  learn  something  of  the  value  of  that 
moral  motive  power  which  came  into  human 
life,  from  God,  as  He  revealed  Himself  in  the  pure 
theism  of  the  Old  Testament.  W&  have  thought 
recently  of  the  Garden  of  Eden,  whose  river  flowed 
simply  "out  of  Eden  into  the  garden" — for  Adam's 
life  was  naturalism.    Of  the  city  of  God,  we  shall 


32    PATHS    TO    THE    CITY    OF    GOD 

see  still  more,  when  we  study  the  river  "proceeding 
out  of  the  throne  of  God  and  of  the  Lamb."  Let 
us  now  note  the  vivifying  power  of  the  Divine 
inspiration,  coming  into  human  life,  as  Ezekiel  knew 
it.  "Everything  shall  live,"  says  the  prophet, 
"whither  the  river  cometh." 

"Egypt,"  says  Herodotus,  "is  a  present  from  the 
Nile;"  and  the  richness  of  human  life,  its  meaning 
and  its  hope,  are  the  gift  of  a  divine  inspiration 
coming  into  the  wastes  of  existence,  and  making 
the  barrenness  of  the  spirit  fertile.  Marietti  tells  us : 
"Had  not  the  equatorial  rains  been  compelled  to  win 
for  themselves  a  passage  to  the  Mediterranean, 
Egypt  would  not  have  existed.  Egypt  began  by 
being  the  bed  of  a  torrent."  This  is  the  story 
of  many  a  Congo  Valley,  Mississippi  region,  and 
exquisite  Vale  of  Arno.  But  it  is  also  the  record 
of  character,  in  the  little  life  of  one  human  being, 
the  large  life  of  a  nation,  and  the  vaster  life  of 
humanity.  Character  is  waste  transformed  by 
something  more  vital  than  itself,  which  traverses  its 
barrenness,  leaving  the  accumulation  which  it  has 
brought  from  some  other  realm  to  enrich  and  to 
bless.  Character  is  the  deposit  and  influence  of 
accepted  and  obeyed  motive.  "Everything  lives," 
only  when  the  river  of  some  inspiration,  to  which 
life  gladly  submits,  makes  its  enlivening  way. 

All  life  is  dependent  upon  God.  By  Him  things 
exist  and  organisms  live.  He  is  immanent  in  law, 
and  thus  nature  continues.  Unconscious  life  touches 
Him  as  force.    Conscious  and  deliberative  life,  self- 


RIVER    OF    EZEKIEL'S    VISION     33 

determining  man  feels  Him  as  Will.  Just  as  when  a 
crystal  does  not  perfectly  conform  to  law  and  force, 
it  must  cease  to  exist,  so,  from  Adam  until  now, 
unconforming  self-will  is  death.  Death  entered  by 
Adam,  and  reigns,  Man  in  himself  is  lifeless,  fruit- 
less. His  hope  is  in  the  inspiration  of  God,  from 
without,  not  in  evolution  from  within.  Fruitfulness 
can  never  come  by  any  self-working  process  of 
internal  improvement.  No  myriad  centuries  can 
guarantee  the  evolution  of  a  river  out  of  the  dry 
sands.  The  apostles  of  culture  alone  propose  the  im- 
possible. The  gravitations  are  against  lifting  one's 
self  up  by  his  boot  straps.  The  idea  that  men  may 
be  made  fruitful  by  cultivation,  that  the  wastes  of 
Ezekiel's  vision  may  be  made  productive  by  the  use 
of  the  hoe,  is  the  scheme  of  an  already  overworked 
naturalism,  which,  with  all  its  display  of  assurance, 
has  no  samples  of  productiveness  on  exhibition. 
No  number  of  plows  and  harrows,  and  wheat  drills 
and  reapers  and  threshers,  can  extract  the  tiniest 
grain  of  wheat  from  a  whole  Sahara;  and  not  all 
the  training  of  which  the  soul  is  capable  can  bring 
fruit  out  of  its  moral  fruitlessness.  The  intellect 
may  be  upturned  like  an  ash  heap,  where  once  a 
city  stood  by  great  ideas,  and  yet  be  dead.  The 
emotions  may  be  stirred,  like  a  sandy  beach  by  the 
breakers  of  an  Atlantic,  until  every  grain  of  sand 
has  been  moved,  and  yet  be  ineffective  to  grow  the 
smallest  plant  of  goodness.  Somehow,  these  must 
be  so  influenced  that  the  will  is  traversed  by  some 
all-mastering  inspiration,  which,   in  any  moment, 


34     PATHS    TO    THE    CITY    OF    GOD 

may  appeal  to  the  intellect  and  feelings  for  their 
support.  Some  accepted  and  felt  and  obeyed  reality 
must  be  acknowledged  as  a  motive ;  some  river  must 
flow  with  authoritative  power,  vitalizing  and  enrich- 
ing, as  it  flows  through  the  waste,  before  fruit 
comes.  The  will  must  be  absolutely  responsive  to 
some  great  inflowing  and  worthy  stream  of  purpose, 
which  hides  it  as  the  current  of  the  Amazon  hides  the 
avenue  through  which  it  runs;  and  then  life  comes. 
Character  then  begins  to  form — "a.  vital  synthesis 
of  forces,"  higher  than  its  environment.  The 
regions  of  the  soul,  which  lie  next  to  the  new  purpose 
and  are  most  touched  by  it,  are  quickened,  and  the 
desert  blossoms  as  the  rose. 

And  here  we  are,  then,  just  where  earnest 
thinkers  in  all  ages  have  stood;  some  bewildered, 
some  in  prayer,  some  in  raptures  of  joy.  Ezekiel 
was  standing  with  his  Hebrew  theism,  amidst 
the  struggles  of  men;  and,  unconsciously,  he  was 
compelled  to  deal  with  the  great  questions  of  ethical 
philosophy.  The  ten  tribes  were  to  have  a  temple, 
but  that  temple  was  to  stand  confronting,  on  every 
side,  a  worthless  waste  of  land,  with  a  bitter  sea 
beyond,  unless  something  came  out  from  that  temple 
into  that  land  to  bring  life.  Man  has  drawn  much 
of  his  higher — but  not  his  highest  inspiration  from 
his  temples.  Each  temple  of  the  past  may  have 
been  but  his  aspiration  crystallized,  his  hope  em- 
bodied; but,  nevertheless,  the  power  of  his  life  has 
varied  with  the  sacredness  of  that  shrine.  The 
temple  of  Ezekiel  was  the  dwelling  place  of  his 


RIVER    OF    EZEKIEL'S    VISION     35 

God,  of  one  who  made  the  holy  place  more  than 
Emerson's  account  might  suggest  of  these  "holy 
piles"  when  he  says : 

"  Know'st  thou  what  wove  yon  wood-bird's  nest. 
Of  leaves  and  feathers  from  her  breast  ? 
Or  how  the  fish  outbuilt  her  shell, 
Painting  with  morn  each  annual  cell  ? 
Or  how  the  sacred  pine  tree  adds 
To  her  old  leaves  new  myriads  ? 
Such  and  so  grew  these  holy  piles, 
While  love  and  terror  laid  the  tiles." 

The  temple  of  Ezekiel's  vision  was  charged  with 
moral  motive  power.  It  was  a  visible  reminder  of 
one  whom  no  man  had  brought  there.  It  was  a 
perpetual  proclamation  that,  behind  all  the  changing 
life,  and  around,  was  the  Supreme  Holiness — God, 
whose  purpose  and  righteousness  were  the  sanction 
of  all  morality.  Emerson's  other  words  were  true 
of  this  prophet  and  of  his  imagined  temple : 

"  The  passive  master  lent  his  hand 
To  the  vast  soul  that  o'er  him  planned." 

An  element  of  unconsciousness  lies  deep  in  all  far- 
reaching  action;  and  this  prophet,  as  we  shall  see, 

"  Wrought  in  a  sad  sincerity, 
Himself  from  God  he  could  not  free, 
He  builded  better  than  he  knew, 
The  conscious  stone  to  beauty  grew." 

Ezekiel's  temple,  as  the  testimony  to  God's  presence, 
yielded  a  moral  motive  power  which  urged  the  life 
of  man  to  beauty  and  productiveness, 

Man  finds  himself  here,  on  a  planet  upon  which 
are  ever-deepening  mysteries;  but  he  is  borne  in 


36    PATHS    TO    THE    CITY    OF    GOD 

upon  with  intimations  and  hopes  of  possible  char- 
acter and  attainment,  which,  with  mystery  or  with- 
out it,  make  Hfe  worth  Hving.  Such  excellence 
of  nature  seems  to  exist  for  him  and  to  invite  him 
on,  as  that  he  shall  justify  his  existence  in  the  pres- 
ence of  the  highest  conceptions  which  he  has,  and 
the  noblest  ideals  which  he  knows.  Character — 
such  as  makes  him  accord  with  the  universe  and 
himself — seems  to  be  a  reality,  in  front  of  him. 
What  shall  carry  him  on  to  its  attainment? 
Character  has  often  been  described  as  "completely 
fashioned  will."  This  seems  an  inadequate  account 
of  what  involves  the  highest  life  of  the  intellect  and 
sensibilities;  but  it  emphasizes  the  truth  that  char- 
acter has  its  vital  center  in  a  great  motive,  which 
the  will  adopts  as  its  own  purpose.  This  motive, 
when  it  comes  to  the  intellect,  comes  as  a  truth.  It 
must  be  such  a  truth,  and  so  evidently  a  truth,  yea, 
so  unchanging  must  be  the  form  in  which  it  comes 
and  wins  its  way,  that,  ever  after,  as  the  feelings 
seize  hold  of  it  and  the  will  rouses  under  it,  it  may 
have  the  same  power  in  the  will  which  comes  from 
the  reason  and  the  emotions.  That  is,  my  motive 
must  be  the  intelligently  apprehended  and  heartily 
felt  and  cherished  purpose  of  life — a  river  which 
flows  into  my  existence  and  vitalizes  all  the  land 
upon  either  side  into  productiveness. 

How  constantly,  in  both  the  failure  and  achieve- 
ment of  worthy  character,  has  this  account  of  its 
production  been  exemplified.  Here,  for  example, 
is  a  man  of  singularly  interesting  parts.     His  in- 


RIVER    OF    EZEKIEL'S    VISION     37 

tellect  seems  to  know  all  facts  and  to  apprehend 
certain  truth  with  clearness.  He  is  full  of  kind- 
ness, and  has  the  tenderest  feelings,  with  the 
finest  yearnings  after  the  good.  His  will,  at  every 
practical  crisis  of  daily  labor,  seems  strong;  but  in 
the  presence  of  the  highest  tasks  of  the  spirit  it 
seems  fast  asleep,  like  a  great  giant.  Somehow,  he 
does  nothing;  makes  no  advance.  The  ideas  which 
he  has  float  away  from  his  fine  brain,  and  he  cares 
not.  The  facts  which  he  knows,  and  the  truth  which 
he  sees — he  has  no  special  interest  in  them,  no  warm 
grasp  upon  them.  The  heart,  so  often  moved,  grows 
less  strong  for  effort.  No  movement,  definite,  de- 
liberate, personal,  comes  out  of  all  this  changing 
scene  in  his  soul.  His  life  is  a  dreary  waste.  What 
can  be  the  future  of  such  a  desert  as  this  ?  A  certain 
school  of  ethical  thinkers  could  fitly  come  along  just 
here  and  tell  us :  "O,  it  will  rain,  some  day,  upon 
that  land."  You  look  up  at  vague,  white,  fleecy 
clouds,  of  which  moral  system-makers  have  been  so 
productive,  and  you  wait  in  vain  for  their  treasures 
of  power  to  descend.  These  are  "the  clouds  without 
water,"  as  Jude  says :  "carried  about  with  winds." 
If  it  should  rain  on  such  a  life,  every  drop  of  truth 
or  of  sentiment  soaks  away  amidst  the  sands.  Such 
a  man's  nature  seem.s  to  have  reached  a  state  where 
it  is  just  like  sand.  There  is  a  distance  between 
each  smallest  fragment  and  the  next.  There  is  no 
rich  productiveness  into  which  a  root  can  go  and 
hide  itself,  until  the  plant  grows  out.  What  can  be 
done  ?    Culture  will  not  make  it  fertile.    Only  a  new 


38    PATHS    TO    THE    CITY    OF    GOD 

inspiration  from  without,  continuous  and  supreme — 
only  an  omnipotent  motive  will  do  it.  A  motive 
coming  into  his  life  from  without,  like  a  river,  will 
bring  along  with  its  hurrying  flood  the  richness  of 
other  climes.  Other  and  fertile  specks  of  truth  will 
come;  other  and  productive  deposits  will  be  left  in 
its  transforming  course;  and  "he  will  be  renewed 
day  by  day."  O,  sandy  wastes  and  arid  deserts! 
there  is  hope  for  your  leaflessness,  help  for  your 
f ruitlessness !  There  is  a  river  which  makes  the 
soil  richer,  as  the  years  go  by. 

Ezeki&l's  river  ran  out  from  beneath  the  temple 
of  God.  It  seems  a  picture  in  whose  significance 
lies  the  moral  influence  of  Hebrew  theism.  John's 
river,  flowing  through  the  heavenly  city  and  flowing 
from  the  throne  of  God  and  the  Lamb,  gives  a 
setting  to  the  truth  of  Christian  ethics. 

Over  and  over  again,  in  the  lives  of  men  and 
of  peoples,  has  that  desert,  which  the  old  prophet 
saw,  stood  out  fruitless  and  sad.  Life,  uninspired 
from  above,  has  stood  up  before  Utilitarian  and 
Lituitionalist,  Aristotle  and  Kant,  Mill  and  Caird 
with  its  multitudes  of  men  and  women,  who  have 
given  testimony  to  the  fact,  that,  without  the  truth 
which  made  the  history  of  Israel  what  it  was,  their 
earthly  life  was  a  desert.  Transcendentalism  is  too 
lofty  a  vision  for  the  lowliest;  Utilitarianism  is  too 
lowly  a  dream  for  the  loftiest;  and  man  is  motive- 
less. Into  that  awful  perplexity,  where  the  sands 
are  bright  but  unproductive,  a  perplexity  seen  quite 
as  certainly  by  the  students  of  Plato  as  by  the 


RIVER    OF    EZEKIEL'S    VISION     39 

students  of  Adam  Smith,  Ezekiel  had  seen  coming 
the  fact  of  a  divine  inspiration,  touching  man  at  the 
highest  points  of  his  personahty,  leading  him  on  by 
the  response  which  it  awakened  in  him,  and  con- 
trolhng  his  hfe  by  obtaining  his  obedience  into  this 
vision  of  the  good,  the  true,  and  the  beautiful,  as 
unto  the  Divine.  With  this  Hebrew  prophet  and 
seer,  the  whole  life  of  man  was  to  gain  its  meaning 
and  at  last  was  to  reach  its  goal  by  the  influence 
of  the  Living  God,  as  a  motive  upon  his  will — a 
motive,  which,  appearing  in  any  form,  shall  always 
have  its  value  to  the  soul,  in  that  it  draws  its 
purposefulness  from  the  infinite  purpose;  a  motive 
not  less  but  more  evidently  authoritative,  as  the 
pitiless  analysis  of  the  intellect  seeks  to  try  it  and 
as  the  fierce  fires  of  the  emotions  blaze  against  it;  a 
motive  which  allies  the  obedient  spirit  with  the  order 
of  the  universe  from  atom  to  galaxy;  a  motive  so 
urgent  in  its  energy  as  to  bear  the  soul  to  the  goal 
which  it  sees  in  its  best  dreams,  and  so  tender  in  its 
persuasions  that  the  weakest  may  confess  its  sover- 
eignty, and  no  finest  gossamer  thread  of  personal 
liberty  be  broken;  a  motive  which  is  thus  God's  voice 
to  man's  spirit,  a  river  running  into  the  dreary 
motiveless  life  of  humanity  from  beneath  the  temple 
of  God. 

"What  we  claim,  then,  for  Israel,"  says  Arnold, 
"when  we  say  that  he  had  the  intuition  of  the 
Eternal  Power  not  ourselves,  that  makes  for  right- 
eousness, when  we  say  that  to  him  were  intrusted 
the  oracles  of  God,  that  to  him  our  religion  was 


40     PATHS    TO    THE    CITY    OF    GOD 

first  revealed,  is  this :  that  the  ideas  of  moral  order 
and  of  right,  which  are  in  human  nature,  which 
appear  in  a  recognizable  shape,  whatever  may  be 
their  origin,  as  soon  as  man  is  sufficiently  formed 
for  him  to  have  a  history  at  all,  to  be  intelligible 
to  us  at  all,  to  stand  related  to  us  as  showing  a 
like  nature  with  ourselves — that  these  ideas  so  laid 
hold  upon  Israel  as  to  be  the  master  element  in  his 
thoughts,  the  sheet-anchor  of  his  life.  And  these 
ideas  have  such  a  range  that  they  take  in  at  least 
three-fourths  of  human  life.  It  matters  nothing 
that  Israel  could  give  no  satisfying  and  scientific 
account  of  the  way  in  which  he  came  by  these  ideas, 
that  he  could  only  give  legendary  and  fanciful 
accounts  of  it.  It  matters  nothing  that  the  practical 
application  he  gave  to  these  ideas  was  extremely 
crude  and  limited,  that  they  were  accompanied  in 
him  with  gross  imperfection.  It  matters  nothing 
that  there  may  be  shown  to  have  hung  about  them 
any  number  of  waifs  and  strays  from  an  earlier  and 
unripe  stage,  survivals  from  a  time  of  nature- 
worship,  or  of  any  passage  which  preceded,  with 
Israel,  the  entrance  upon  his  real  history. 

"His  very  shortcomings  prove  the  force  of  the 
intuition  within  him,  since  all  the  wear  and  tear 
of  them  could  not  rase  it  out." 

Plato  has  spoken  of  that  "aliment  of  the  holy, 
true,  and  good,  which  is  the  common  well-spring 
for  the  thirst  of  all  minds.  Divine  and  human." 
This  moral  force,  as  far  as  it  concerned  man,  had, 
in   Ezekiel's  mind,  a  somewhat  different  location 


RIVER    OF    EZEKIEL'S    VISION     4l 

from  that  advertised  by  some  ancient  and  modern 
venders  of  moral  systems.  One  holiness  did  the 
poetic  Hebrew  and  the  philosophic  Greek  see  in 
the  universe,  and  only  one.  That  holiness,  in  the 
Hebrew  mind,  was  not  an  evolution  out  of  man's 
life,  but  a  thing  flowing  in  and  through  it  from 
without.  I  cannot  be  persuaded  to  a  noble  life  by 
my  own  pledges  that  a  noble  life  is  secure.  The 
life  of  God  makes  it  secure,  and  wakes  my  spirit 
into  its  undertaking.  There  comes  a  time  in  the 
evolution  of  the  moral  life  that  man  must  have  his 
temple.  The  building  must  embody  God :  before 
the  Christ  can  incarnate  and  reveal  God  to  man 
and  in  man.  It  is  impossible  to  get  a  moral 
dynamic,  elsewhere,  than  from  under  the  temple 
of  God.  The  naturalism  which  failed  to  keep 
Adam  negatively  innocent,  will  hardly  rouse  him 
into  positive  holiness.  Since  Man  fell,  God  must 
disclose  His  nature  in  and  by  a  growing  motive 
power.  It  is  not  alone  the  idea  of  the  older  faith, 
but  the  testimony  of  the  soul  under  Judaism,  that 
the  soul  must  have  its  sacred  spot  somewhere. 
Man  will  worship.  Out  of  that  sacred  place,  where 
an  "honor"  higher  than  his  own  "dwelleth,"  must 
come  his  inspiration.  The  masterful  holiness  of 
God  alone  can  worthily  and  hence  permanently 
move  him  to  the  doing  of  duty.  Duty  must  be 
due-ty  to  some  One,  in  whom  his  intellect  and 
feeling  and  will  find  satisfaction.  Until  his  will 
accepts  as  divine  inspiration  for  life,  "the  higher, 
in  the  presence  of  the  lower,"  and  adopts  the  doing 


42     PATHS    TO    THE    CITY    OF    GOD 

of  it  as  its  best  loved  purpose,  the  intellect  refuses 
to  approve  and  the  heart  declines  to  rejoice.  But, 
when  these  come  into  him,  the  imperial  goodness 
and  holiness  and  truth  as  the  very  life  of  God,  and 
v^hen  it  touches  his  spirit,  until  the  "/  ought"  of  con- 
science is  obeyed,  then  morality  passes  over  into 
religion;  the  soul  is  consciously  at  one  with  the 
spirit  of  things;  and  he  cries:  "O  God!  all  my 
springs  are  in  Thee."  "With  Thee  is  the  fountain 
of  life  and  in  Thy  light  do  we  see  light." 

I  know  that  Ezekiel  is  away  back,  in  point  of 
time,  behind  our  purveyors  of  moral  life.  Surely 
humanity,  however,  is  older  than  they.  Surely  this 
same  humanity  has  found  the  lack  of  motive 
power  for  human  life,  in  outworn  creeds  which 
are  now  so  eloquently  defended,  in  the  various 
forms  in  which  the  modern  revivers  of  ancient 
thought  have  treated  of  them.  These  were  the 
"broken  cisterns"  of  Isaiah's  prophecy.  The  revival 
of  the  doctrine  that  "self-interest  is  a  basis  for  moral 
action,"  gives  history  another  chance  to  sadly  repeat 
itself.  When  the  most  ancient  thinker  stood  with 
self-interest  as  his  moral  spring,  the  dissatisfaction 
which  the  most  modern  knows,  was  his.  The  desert 
of  life  is  too  wide  to  be  fertilized  from  such  a 
"broken  cistern."  My  true  self-interest  takes  me  out 
of  myself.  I  must  be  inspired  from  above,  if  at  all. 
When  some  lonely  questioner  in  the  field  of  prac- 
tical ethics  sought  to  get  power  for  his  powerless 
life,  from  the  vague  and  impalpable  abstractions, 
which,  like  rainless  clouds,  floated  above  his  head,  he 


RIVER    OF    EZEKIEL'S    VISION     43 

had  the  same  fate  as  the  citizen  of  some  modern 
Babylon  or  Nineveh,  who  seeks  in  vain  to  move 
himself  by  the  help  of  far-away  and  uninteresting 
principles.  It  is  not  a  feeling  of  any  time,  but  of 
every  age,  leaving  its  traces  in  Egypt  and  modern 
England,  which,  full  of  dismay  at  the  wretched 
powerlessness  of  every  other  scheme  of  morals,  looks 
with  simple  gaze  toward  the  temple  of  God — the 
place  where  the  highest  dwells — the  spot  where  His 
holiness  has  its  earthly  seat — and  cries  out,  using 
the  figure  of  Isaiah's  "broken  cisterns:" 

"  Away,  haunt  thou  not  me, 
Thou  vain  philosophy! 
Little  hast  thou  bestead 
Save  to  perplex  the  head. 
And  leave  the  spirit  dead. 
Unto  thy  broken  cisterns  wherefore  go, — 
While  from  the  secret  treasure  depths  below, 
Fed  by  the  skyey  shower. 

And  clouds  that  sink  and  rest  on  hill  tops  high, 
Wisdom  at  once  and  power, 
Are  welling  bubbling  forth  unseen  incessantly. 

Why  labor  at  the  dull  mechanic  oar 
When  the  fresh  breeze  is  blowing 
And  the  strong  current  flowing 
Right  onward  toward  the  eternal  shore  ?" 

There  is  no  satisfactory  morality  which  does  not 
begin  in  religion.  God's  life  enters  into  man's  life 
to  fertilize  and  save  it  from  waste.  The  Divine 
traverses  the  human,  and  redeems  it.  God's  service 
— the  answer  of  the  human  life  to  the  Divine  life 
when  God  says,  "Be  ye  holy,  for  I  am  holy" — this  is 
the  upbringing  of  human  nature  toward  the  infinite ; 


44     PATHS    TO    THE    CITY    OF    GOD 

this  is  the  taking  up  of  my  purpose  by  the  purpose  of 
God;  this  is  the  practical  use  of  an  ideal  from  which 
the  intellect  gets  its  force  and  to  which  the  intellect 
brings  its  tribute;  this  is  the  admission  of  the  pres- 
ence of  God  from  which  the  emotions  obtain  new 
energy  and  to  which  they  bring  their  love;  this  is 
the  actual,  joyful,  deliberate  putting  into  real  life  of 
the  prayer:  "Not  my  will  but  Thine  be  done." 

Here,  then,  morality  passes  into  religion.  God 
is  constant,  God  is  wise,  and  God  is  good.  "If  He 
comes  into  me,"  says  the  soul,  "He  will  make  me 
good,  holy  as  He  is  holy."  Around  and  within  is 
a  glad  new  world,  full  of  leafage  and  blossom,  and 
fruit;  and  lo!  every  salt  sea  beyond  is  no  longer 
bitter  but  sweet.  Here  fact  becomes  poetry;  here 
our  theism  is  inclusive  of  the  neglected  truth  which 
presses  for  recognition  in  all  pantheism,  as  with 
David,  Ezekiel,  Paul,  Tauler,  and  Mme.  Guyon,  No 
longer  does  the  spirit  stop  to  figure  it  out  with  the 
perplexing  equations  of  gain  and  loss,  which  belong 
to  the  mathematics  of  the  brain.  God  is  the 
sovereign  calculator,  and  all  is  well.  No  longer 
need  the  soul  explore  for  right;  the  Supreme  Right- 
eousness has  come,  and  His  awful  footsteps  echo  in 
the  conscience :  "/  ought." 

It  is  not  without  great  gratitude  that  the  serious 
student  beholds  the  noble  influence  of  diis  stream 
of  moral  motive  power,  which  came  into  history 
through  these  Hebrews  and  enriched  it  with  the 
idea  that  the  Omnipotent  Holiness  rules  and  says: 
"Be  ye  holy,  for  I  am  holy."    The  true  conception 


RIVER    OF    EZEKIEL'S    VISION     45 

of  God,  as  seen  through  accepted  and  discharged 
duty,  has  re-created  human  thought.  Think  of  the 
unique  place  these  people  have  made  for  themselves 
in  our  grateful  memory,  by  their  faithfulness  unto 
One,  whose  voice  spoke  in  thunders  at  Sinai  and 
whispered  to  Elijah  at  Horeb.  Not  the  earth,  not 
the  sun  or  moon,  not  the  amber  dawn,  or  the  ruby 
sunset,  not  any  of  these  unstable,  impersonal,  or  de- 
pendent things  before  which  other  nations  stood  in 
awe,  but  a  Spiritual  Creator  and  Guide,  faithful,  just, 
and  true,  gave  the  impulse  to  the  whole  soul.  Not  a 
colossal  despot,  not  a  huge  tyrant  who  dealt  in  venge- 
ance and  panted  for  human  blood,  but  a  King  was 
He  whose  "mercy  endureth  forever;"  a  Sovereign, 
whose  righteousness  was  His  children's  defense;  a 
Ruler,  who  was  both  "sun  and  shield;"  a  mighty 
Saviour,  who  had  said :  "Be  ye  holy,  for  I  am  holy." 
Is  it  to  be  wondered  at  that  Phenicia,  with  her 
golden  impurities  and  jeweled  lusts,  that  the  Assyr- 
ians, with  their  conjuring  rapacity  and  splendid 
tyranny,  that  India,  with  her  richly  colored  power, 
that  Egypt,  whose  wisdom  Moses  had  learned,  are 
the  confessed  inferiors  of  these  escaped  slaves,  who 
brought  with  their  ignorance  and  sorrow  and  vice, 
this  great  motive  power  which  lay  in  their  vision  of 
the  Righteous  Jehovah  ?  That  same  idea  is  a  source 
of  moral  power  to-day.  Any  motive  power  which 
has  come  later  can  only  fulfill  it.  It  is  not  to  be 
destroyed.  It  proposes  a  new  life  to  every  soul — 
a  life  which,  at  its  best,  is  a  prophecy,  such  as 
made  Abraham  the  friend  of  God,  and  Moses  the 


46     PATHS    TO    THE    CITY    OF    GOD 

law-giver  of  Israel.  It  is  no  simply  historical  in- 
terest which  you  and  I  have  in  this  vision  of  Ezekiel, 
with  its  desert  enriched  and  vitalized  by  a  river 
flowing  from  beneath  the  Temple  of  God.  The  story 
of  the  Old  Testament  must  be  told  again  and  again, 
to  our  time.  On  every  hand,  oftentimes  without  a 
thought  of  it  upon  their  part,  are  human  souls  who 
repeat  the  barrenness  of  the  life  which  Ezekiel  saw 
could  be  made  fruitful  only  by  the  recognition  of 
the  Divine  in  the  human.  It  was  that  practical  God- 
lessness  which  leaves  the  sandy  desert  forever  to  be 
a  waste,  against  which  he  was  the  great  protestant. 
That  same  moral  condition  comes,  when  the  sense  of 
the  Infinite  and  the  consciousness  of  God  have  gone 
out  of  life.  .  Atheism  means  moral  and  spiritual 
waste,  and  a  dead  sea  beyond.  You  say  that  our 
age  has  quite  outgrown  this  theory  of  ethics.  But 
nay;  our  age  has  not  outgrown  human  nature  and 
God.  Many  a  life,  with  a  negative  creed  upon  its 
lips,  "crieth  out  for  the  living  God." 

Every  man  feels,  in  his  sanest  hour,  that  he 
must  have  a  valid  reason  for  the  facts  within  what 
men  have  called  his  conscience,  if  he  is  to  obey  them 
at  all.  Here,  for  example,  is  a  man  who  has  no 
feeling  of  God  in  his  heart,  no  recognition  of  God 
on  the  part  of  his  intellect;  and  the  great  pressure 
comes  upon  him  of  deciding  between  what  are  called 
*'the  lower  and  higher  powers  of  his  nature."  He 
is  left  entirely  to  himself.  The  conflict  grows  sharp, 
and  he  says:  "This  idea  of  one  set  of  the  faculties 
of  myself  being   higher   than   others   may   be   an 


RIVER    OF    EZEKIEL'S    VISION     47 

illusion  anyhow.  Why  higher?  Why  should  I 
make  those  powers  submit,  and  enthrone  these  other 
powers  of  my  being?  All  these  powers  have  come 
up  out  of  the  same  'ooze  and  slime.'  All  these 
faculties  only  grow  strong  by  culture.  I  confess 
I  do  not  feel  any  right  of  leadership  and  authority 
in  what  men  have  been  pleased  to  call  my  moral 
faculties.  I  do  not  know  why  I  am  to  make  the 
so-called  lower  obey  the  higher,"  and  there  is 
nothing  to  stop  that  man  from  making  conscience 
and  reason  to  submit  to  passion  and  lust,  nothing 
between  that  man  and  utter  waste.  There  are  times 
when  the  sharp  spear  of  passion  presses  to  the  wall; 
and  the  man  who  does  not  feel  that  God  is  the 
eternal  goodness  and  that  it  is  He  who  is  tugging 
at  the  highest  and  best  that  is  in  him,  seeking  to 
lead  it  still  higher,  is  leaderless,  save  as  a  prey  to  the 
brute  force  which  demands  the  scepter.  Times  there 
are,  when  chaos  rules  in  him  who  hears  not  in  reason 
and  conscience  the  voice  of  God. 

Here  is  another  man,  who  is  without  a  real  in- 
spiration from  God  in  his  conscious  life;  and  he 
finds  himself  at  some  life  problem  hopelessly  per- 
plexed. He  stands  where  what  men  call  right  and 
wrong  diverge  from  his  simple  path.  He  says: 
"Well,  this  thing  called  right — what  is  it,  after  all  ? 
In  this  case  of  mine  it  means  inconvenience  and 
pain;  it  is  darkness  itself.  That  which  men  have 
called  zvrong  is,  somehow,  in  this  case,  a  route 
immensely  more  safe  to  my  feet.  Is  it  not,  then, 
simply  a  foolish  whim  for  me  to  go  into  what  seems 


48    PATHS    TO    THE    CITY    OF    GOD 

darkness,  with  this  curiously-grown  abstraction 
called  right?  It  is  not  'certain'  to  me,  or  even 
'probable,'  that  right  has  any  basis  in  the  order  of 
things.  I  am  sure  that  right  does  not  say  to  me, 
with  any  authority,  'trust  me.'  "  There  is  no  such 
terrible  powerlessness  as  that.  His  universe  means 
nothing;  for  there  is  no  personal  life,  into  whose 
hands  these  reins  of  influence  run,  no  one  who  guides 
the  fiery- footed  forces  of  the  world.  But  if,  once, 
God  does,  in  that  man's  consciousness,  stand  behind 
right,  it  surely  speaks  with  a  voice  not  strong  enough 
to  overpower  his  will,  but  certainly  just  influential 
enough  in  its  persuasions  to  get  him  to  take  the  next 
step.  Duty  is  Omnipotent,  only  with  God  in  every 
accent  of  her  voice.  "Stern  daughter,"  is  she,  "of 
the  voice  of  God." 

"  Stern  law-giver!  yet  thou  dost  wear 
The  Godhead's  most  benignant  grace; 
Nor  know  we  anything  so  fair 
As  is  the  smile  upon  thy  face. 
Flowers  laugh  before  thee  on  their  beds; 
And  fragrance  in  thy  footing  treads; 
Thou  dost  preserve  the  stars  from  wrong; 
And  the  most  ancient  heavens  through  thee  are  fresh  and 
strong." 

Do  you  say  this  is  but  "morality  touched  by 
emotion"?  Nay;  it  is  rather  the  emotions  suffusing 
the  whole  soul  with  a  life  which  guarantees  and 
perpetuates  a  morality,  true  and  joyous.  O !  what 
deserts  of  human  life  are  these,  which  come  of  this 
parched  distrust,  against  which  such  a  theism  works ! 
Leafless,  fruitless  lives  are  these,  which  have  not  felt 


RIVER    OF    EZEKIEL'S    VISION     49 

the  divine  motive  to  do  right,  in  the  righteousness 
of  God  Himself,  who 

"  Standeth  in  the  shadow,  keeping  watch  above  His  own." 

It  is  a  world  robbed  of  personal  meaning,  in 
which  moves  not  the  highest;  which,  as  we  obey  it, 
turns  out  to  be  "the  High  and  Holy  One  which 
inhabiteth  eternity."  There  must  be  a  personal  will, 
to  you  and  to  me,  in  whose  on-sweeping  purpose  all 
our  life-currents  are  sure  of  resource  and  impulse, 
if  life  is  to  mean  much.  One  mighty  life  there  must 
be  "whose  service  is  perfect  freedom" — a  life  which 
makes  the  abstractions  of  goodness  and  truth  and 
righteousness  realities  to  us  because  they  are  His 
ways ;  and  that  life  must  be  our  life,  if  we  would  be 
strong.  In  that  life,  all  is  communion;  "in  Him 
we  live  and  move  and  have  our  being." 


Ill 

THE    RIVER   OF   JOHN'S   VISION 

''And  he  showed  me  a  pure  river  of  the  water  of  life, 
clear  as  crystal,  proceeding  out  of  the  throne  of  God  and  of 
the  Lamb.  Iti  the  midst  of  the  street  of  it,  and  on  either  side 
of  the  river,  was  there  the  tree  of  life  which  bare  twelve 
tnamier  of  fruits  and  yielded  her  fruit  every  ?nonth,  and  the 
leaves  of  the  tree  were  for  the  healing  of  the  nations" 
Revelation  xxii.  i,  2. 

THE  kinship  of  Ezekiel  and  John  proves  to  be 
more  than  the  natural  relationship  of  two 
exalted  spirits,  receptive  of  the  same  inspira- 
tion, and  confronting  what  are  at  root  the  same 
problems.  Students  of  the  later  exile  see  very  clearly 
in  him  the  master  influence  of  the  earlier;  and  the 
shores  of  Patmos  seem  yet  to  repeat  to  each  breaking 
wave  the  tones  of  Ezekiel's  lyre,  as  he  musingly  ran 
over  its  strings  by  the  rivers  of  Babylon.  We  have 
looked  through  Ezekiel's  eyes  at  the  future  of  what 
to  him  was  humanity.  Let  us  now,  if  only  by  the 
use  of  a  figure  of  speech,  transfer  our  attention  to 
the  vision  of  John,  and,  using  the  figure  of  the 
river  vitalizing  and  enriching  that  which  it  touches — 
a  figure  which  first  occurs  in  the  picture  of  the 
primeval  garden — again  study  the  character  and 
influence  of  the  Divine  inspiration  in  the  redemption 
of  man. 

I  have  not  attempted,  in  these  studies  of  the 
50 


RIVER    OF    JOHN'S    VISION       51 

Garden  in  Genesis,  the  fruitful  country  in  Ezekiel, 
and  the  City  in  Revelation,  to  find  for  many  of  these 
interesting  phrases,  a  corresponding  fact,  or  experi- 
ence, in  the  spiritual  life  of  man.  I  do,  however, 
feel  that,  using  reverently  and  inquiringly  these 
suggestive  figures  of  speech  with  reference  to  the 
life  of  the  soul,  we  discern  a  certain  value  in  this 
method.  The  exceedingly  significant  illumination 
which  comes  from  the  ancient  records  into  the 
unwritten  pages  of  the  interior  life  is  matched  only 
by  that  penetrative  light  which  other  experiences  of 
the  soul  lend  to  the  poetic  measures  of  that  far-away 
time. 

It  has  been  said  that  "the  Apocalypse  is  the 
natural  history  of  moral  principles;"  and  Jean  Paul 
has  told  us  that  "the  first  leaf  of  the  Mosaic  record 
has  more  weight  than  all  the  folios  of  men  of  science 
and  philosophers."  Certain  it  is,  that  the  same  great 
Spirit  which  lifted  what  would  have  been  the  prose 
of  Genesis  and  Ezekiel  and  Revelation  into  poetry, 
did  it  by  putting  within  these  verses  some  eternal 
truth  to  which  the  souls  of  men  in  ages  yet  to  be, 
would  come,  and  which  should  be  read  and  pondered 
upon  a  little  more  plainly  as  knowledge  grew  from 
more  to  more.  It  is  impossible,  thus,  that  three 
epochs  dealing  with  the  same  problem  and,  amidst 
all  variations,  using  with  singular  force  the  same 
figure  of  speech,  should  not  leave  three  pictures  of 
the  attitude  of  the  human  soul  toward  the  truth 
which  is  common  to  all.  Even  Longfellow  could  not 
use  in  his  day  the  "ladder  of  St.  Augustine,"  with- 


52    PATHS    TO    THE    CITY    OF    GOD 

out  showing  between  the  rounds  thereof  the  spiritual 
development  which  the  human  mind  had  known  in 
the  flight  of  years.  The  same  conception  Tennyson 
borrows  from  Goethe  for  "In  Memoriam."  Take 
another  illustration  in  a  more  exclusively  intellectual 
realm.  The  "circle"  which  the  ancient  Egyptian 
found  in  the  date-leaf,  played  a  part  in  his  phi- 
losophy. It  appears  in  the  vision  of  Ezekiel.  So 
also,  the  circle  seemed  to  be  the  beginning  of  a 
philosophy  at  an  earlier  age  in  the  Orient.  Alger 
translates  from  an  ancient  book  of  quatrains  to  this 
effect : 

"  The  universe  is  circular  in  form; 
The  transmigration  of  the  soul  is  truth  divine; 
If  linear  progress  were  each  being's  norm, 
The  whole  creation  would  at  last  become  a  line." 

Emerson  writes  his  essay  on  "Circles,"  on  about 
the  same  underlying  truth  which  Plato  saw,  and 
Augustine  repeated,  with  a  strange  similarity  of 
phrase;  and  our  Occidental  Saadi  makes  the  fall  of 
Uriel   lie    in   the   discovery   which    he   made   that 

"  Line  in  nature  is  not  found, 
Unit  and  universe  are  round. 
In  vain  produced,  all  rays  return, 
Evil  will  bless,  and  ice  will  burn." 

Now,  begin  with  this  figure  of  speech  in  the  far 
Orient;  follow  it  to  Egypt,  and  into  Hebrewdom; 
see  it  in  Alexandria  where  Plato,  at  least  where 
Pythagoras,  found  it;  study  it  in  Plato;  and  behold 
its  development  in  his  earlier  pupil,  Augustine;  look 
at  it  in  his  latest,  in  Emerson,  and  you  have  a  slight 


RIVER    OF    JOHN'S    VISION       53 

thread  indeed,  but  still  a  thread,  by  which  one  may- 
obtain  a  true  picture  of  the  attitude  of  the  soul,  in 
each  of  these  eras,  toward  certain  facts — a  thread 
all  the  more  valuable,  perhaps,  for  such  purposes  as 
are  those  of  the  student,  because  of  the  unconscious 
relationship  which,  with  it  in  their  hands,  these  men 
had  to  one  another. 

The  river  flowing  out  of  Eden  into  the  garden, 
the  river  of  Ezekiel's  imagined  country  flowing  out 
from  beneath  the  temple  of  God,  the  river  of  John's 
holy  city  flowing  out  from  the  throne  of  God 
and  of  the  Lamb,  each  inspiring  the  life  which  it 
touches,  may  be  used  in  this  same  way  to  emphasize 
three  phases  of  the  inspiration  of  God,  as  it  enters 
into  human  life,  to  enliven  and  to  enrich  it — three 
eras  in  the  development  of  man's  conception  of  the 
divine  motive  power  which  at  last,  by  redeeming 
him,  brings  him  into  communion  with  God. 

Let  us  advance  from  Ezekiel  to  John,  and  study 
from  the  page  of  this  more  recent  prophet,  the 
Christian  dynamic — a  river  flowing  out  into  the 
complex  and  mutually  related  lives  of  men — a  city 
not  a  garden — a  river  flowing  from  "the  Throne  of 
God  and  of  the  Lamb." 

The  highest  inspiration  which  God  has  given  to 
human  life  is  the  motive  power  coming  into  it 
through  the  life  and  death  of  Jesus  Christ.  Between 
Ezekiel,  who  was  the  seer  of  man's  struggle  and 
hope,  and  John,  who  was  the  seer  of  man's  consum- 
mate blessedness  and  attainment,  comes  in  the  great 
fact  to  which,  in  every  one  of  their  successes  and 


54    PATHS    TO    THE    CITY    OF    GOD 

failures,  every  other  moral  influence  pointed — the 
Incarnation  of  God  in  Christ,  Here  is  something 
more  than  a  Temple,  Here  is  a  Character  incarnat- 
ing God  Himself.  Nothing  compares  with  this 
fact  as  a  factor  in  morals.  Eloquently  says  Mr. 
Lecky,  "the  Platonist  exhorted  men  to  imitate  God; 
the  Stoic  to  follow  reason;  the  Christian  to  the  love 
of  Christ.  The  later  Stoics  had  often  united  their 
notions  of  excellence  in  an  ideal  sage,  and  Epictetus 
had  even  urged  his  disciples  to  set  before  them  some 
man  of  surpassing  excellence,  and  to  imagine  him 
continually  near  them;  but  the  utmost  the  Stoic 
ideal  could  become  was  a  model  for  imitation,  and 
the  admiration  it  inspired  could  never  deepen  into 
affection.  It  was  reserved  for  Christianity  to  pre- 
sent to  the  world  an  ideal  character  which,  through 
all  the  changes  of  eighteen  centuries,  has  inspired  the 
hearts  of  men  with  an  impassioned  love;  has  shown 
itself  capable  of  acting  on  all  ages,  nations,  tempera- 
ments, and  conditions ;  has  been  not  only  the  highest 
pattern  of  virtue,  but  the  strongest  incentive  to  its 
practice;  and  has  exercised  so  deep  an  influence 
that  it  may  be  truly  said  that  the  simple  record  of 
three  short  years  of  active  life  has  done  more  to 
regenerate  and  soften  mankind  than  all  the  disquisi- 
tions of  philosophers,  and  all  the  exhortations  of 
moralists.  This  has,  indeed,  been  the  well-spring  of 
whatever  is  best  and  purest  in  the  Christian  life. 
Amid  all  the  sins  and  failings,  amid  all  the  priest- 
craft and  persecution  and  fanaticism  that  have  de- 
faced the  church,  it  has  preserved  in  the  character 


RIVER    OF    JOHN'S    VISION       55 

and  example  of  its  founder,  an  enduring  principle 
of  regeneration." 

"A  great  poet,"  adds  Lecky,  "in  lines  which  are 
among  the  noblest  in  English  literature  has  spoken 
of  one  who  died,  as  united  to  the  all-pervading  soul 
of  nature,  the  grandeur  and  the  tenderness,  the 
beauty  and  the  passion  of  his  being  blending  with 
the  kindred  elements  of  the  universe;  his  voice  heard 
in  all  its  melodies,  his  spirit  a  presence  to  be  felt 
and  known,  a  part  of  the  one  plastic  energy  that 
permeates  and  animates  the  globe.  Something  of 
this  kind,  but  of  a  far  more  vivid  and  real  character, 
was  the  belief  of  the  early  Christian  world.  The 
universe  to  them  was  transfigured  by  love.  All  its 
phenomena,  all  its  catastrophes  were  read  in  a  new 
light,  were  imbued  with  a  new  significance,  acquired 
a  religious  sanctity.  Christianity  offered  a  deeper 
consolation  than  any  prospect  of  endless  life,  or  of 
millennial  glories.  It  taught  the  weary,  and  the 
sorrowing,  and  the  lonely  to  look  up  to  heaven,  and 
to  say :  'Thou,  God,  carest  for  me.'  " 

Eloquent  as  is  this  oft-quoted  passage,  it  does  not 
distinctly  touch  the  root  from  which  this  marvelous 
influence  sprang.  The  moral  power  of  Christ  in 
the  world  of  men,  lies  in  the  fact  of  the  Incarnation. 
It  is  impossible  to  conceive  of  His  beginning  human 
history  anew,  as  He  did,  without  perceiving  that  He 
wrought  upon  the  human  soul  in  those  experiences 
which  testify  of  exactly  that  need  which  He  alone 
has  attempted  to  supply.  He  came  when  the  earth 
was  crying  to  heaven,  when,  in  order  to  bridge  the 


56    PATHS    TO    THE    CITY    OF    GOD 

abyss,  a  Caesar  at  death  became  a  god;  when  the 
moral  forces  of  the  past  were  conscious  of  their 
weakness,  and  when  the  pressure  of  intolerable  in- 
iquity was  realized  on  every  side.  If  we  are  to 
believe  Renan,  St.  Paul's  conception  of  Him  has 
done  more  than  He,  to  make  our  modem  conscious- 
ness and  thought.  But  to  St.  Paul,  He  was  "the 
brightness  of  the  Father's  glory,  the  express  image 
of  His  person."  Yea,  more,  He  was  "God  manifest 
in  the  flesh,  to  take  away  the  sins  of  the  world." 
Paul  puts  his  view  of  Christ,  the  moral  power  which 
came  with  Him,  the  method  of  its  operation,  and 
the  prospect  it  offers  in  these  words :  "For  if,  while 
we  were  yet  sinners,  we  were  reconciled  unto  God 
by  the  death  of  His  son,  much  more,  being  recon- 
ciled, we  shall  be  saved  by  His  life."  The  first 
mighty  task  which  Christ  does  for  morals  is  to 
appear  to  the  soul  as  the  Incarnate  God,  to  stand 
before  its  lovelessness  as  love  divine  seeking  its  love 
to  rouse  it  to  the  perception  that  this  loving  father 
is  manifested  perfectly  in  Him;  to  lead  it  on  to  His 
Calvary  and  have  it  there  see  the  cost  of  its  sin,  as  He 
bears  it  for  the  sake  of  love,  to  thus  reconcile  it  to 
God,  and  to  woo  it  to  love  Him  in  His  Christ;  to 
marry  it  to  Him  for  all  eternity,  at  the  very  place 
where  it  falls  in  love  with  the  Divine  love — to  thus 
deliver  it  from  its  sins.  After  "being  reconciled  by 
His  death,"  it  is  "saved  by  His  life."  But  this  is  to 
make  it  rest  upon  Christ's  holiness,  to  begin  a  holy 
life  within  it,  to  make  the  cross  itself  which  rescues 
it  from  the  love  and  guilt  of  sin,  the  inspiring 


RIVER    OF    JOHN'S    VISION       57 

motive  to  a  life  like  the  life  of  Jesus  Christ.  Of 
course,  I  doubt  not,  this  is  understood  to  be  but  an 
inadequate  account  of  the  atonement,  but  to  me 
this  truth  is  the  very  heart  of  it :  "God  was  in  Christ 
reconciling  the  v/orld  to  Himself."  Mr.  Lecky's 
"great  poet"  has  touched  a  truth,  the  use  of  which 
by  Mr.  Lecky  is  possible  only  because  Christ  Himself 
was  the  Word  from  the  beginning.  The  Word  by 
which  the  worlds  were  created.  The  Christ  of  God 
is  the  moral  center,  the  inspiring  life  of  the  universe. 
Love  is  law's  source  and  spirit.  What  Christ,  who 
was  love's  manifestation,  does,  is  to  take  the  soul 
which  has  rebelled  against  love,  in  breaking  law,  and 
bear  it  even  to  the  point  where  love,  in  one  act,  per- 
fectly honors  its  own  law  in  painful  sacrifice,  and 
makes  the  soul  love  Him  so  dearly  that  He  is  its  life. 
But  this  puts  the  soul  in  perfect  harmony  with  the 
entire  universe.  After  that  moment  the  heart  knows 
One  who  is — not  "united  to" — but  who  is  Himself 
"the  Soul  of  Nature."  His  voice  is  its  melody. 
"The  universe  is  transfigured  by  love,"  for  He  who 
is  love  has  manifested  Himself  in  Christ. 

In  all  this  discussion  I  have  said  little  about 
that  faculty,  or  set  of  faculties,  called  Conscience, 
but  we  have  been  dealing  with  its  experiences,  which 
have  been  quite  too  deep  for  definition,  never  more 
radically  than  now.  Here  is  a  fact — the  Incarnate 
God  bearing  the  sins  of  the  world — which  so  rouses 
conscience  that  this  power  of  seeing  and  responding 
to  moral  influences  comes  forth  from  her  hiding 
places,  and  stands  upon  her  feet.     Conscience  re- 


58    PATHS    TO    THE    CITY    OF    GOD 

sponded  to  the  banishment  from  Eden,  as  conscience 
made  Adam  hide  himself  from  God.  Conscience 
echoed  the  thunders  of  Sinai  and  reflected  its 
hghtnings.  Conscience  kept  saying,  "I  ought," 
in  the  Wilderness;  and  she  said  "Yes,"  when 
Nathan  said  to  David,  "Thou  art  the  man."  Con- 
science saw  with  approving  calm  the  thousand  altars 
smoking  with  their  victims,  and  heard  with  approval 
the  words  which  told  the  Divine  hate  of  sin.  The 
pagan  nations  of  earth  were  led  by  her  unswerving 
hand,  and  heard  the  stern  poetry  of  some  Sophocles 
and  ^schylus  in  every  clime.  No  moral  motive  could 
be  sufficient  which  declined  to  treat  with  her  imperial 
majesty.  A  thousand  Macbeths  would  turn  their 
backs  upon  any  influence  which  pretended  to  give 
peace,  if  this  voice  were  to  utter  discontent.  But  at 
last  the  Cross  of  Calvary  was  the  trembling  spot 
of  Christ's  death.  Conscience  saw  the  agony,  heard 
the  voice  assure  the  universe  of  its  power  to  forgive, 
beheld  Him  say,  "All  is  Well,"  to  the  penitent  thief; 
and  the  conscience'  of  humanity  in  her  noblest 
development  has  gone  away  from  that  mountain  for 
nearly  nineteen  centuries,  saying  to  every  soul 
melted  by  the  sight  of  that  cross,  "All  is  Well." 

Let  us  look  at  this  Christian  dynamic  from  the 
point  of  view  which  we  have  occupied  in  our  earlier 
studies. 

No  one  can  discover  the  continuity  of  the  history 
of  redemption  more  clearly  than  in  noting  that  the 
moral  power  in  Christianity  is  not  the  destroying 
but  the  fulfilling  of  that  moral  power  which  man 


RIVER    OF    JOHN'S    VISION       59 

declined  in  the  day  when  he  lost  his  innocence  in 
Eden,  and  which  later  operated  to  the  inspiring  of 
his  spiritual  life  in  the  epoch  of  Israel.  God  is 
constant.  God  is  love.  God  as  manifested  in  the 
Naturalism  of  the  garden,  as  manifested  in  the 
Providential  guidance  of  man's  struggle,  as  mani- 
fested in  the  grace  of  Christ  in  the  holy  city  to 
come,  is  the  same  God.  Man  must  live  his  real  life 
by  the  life  of  God — "by  every  word  which  pro- 
ceedeth  out  of  the  mouth  of  God."  He  is  so  created, 
so  divinely  allied,  so  related  in  nature  to  God,  that 
he  must  live  by  simple  trust.  That  it  is  "to  eat  of 
the  tree  of  life."  What  man  would  have  been  if  he 
had  eaten  of  the  "tree  of  life,"  rather  than  with 
perilous  self-consciousness  eaten  of  "the  tree  of  the 
knowledge  of  good  and  evil,"  we  cannot  tell.  One 
thing  is  clear,  after  he  had  lost  sight  of  the  tree 
of  life  in  innocence,  he  could  see  it  again  only  in 
holiness.  Communion  with  God,  once  lost  by  the 
loss  of  innocence,  can  be  found  again  only  in  holi- 
ness. To  bring  man  to  Him,  then,  God  must  first 
reveal  Himself  to  him  as  the  Supreme  Holiness. 
As  we  have  seen,  the  Old  Testament  word  which 
fell  on  man's  ear  with  increasing  power,  after  his 
loss  of  innocence,  was:  "Be  ye  holy,  for  I  am 
holy."  By  the  conception  of  the  holiness  of  God, 
man  was  trained,  at  the  altar  of  Abraham,  in  the 
'  house  of  Potiphar,  at  the  law-giver's  feet  at  Sinai, 
in  the  songs  of  the  Captivity,  and  in  the  fiery  utter- 
ances of  the  prophets.  At  last  and  through  it, 
through  God's  patience  in  waiting,  with  the  hope 


60    PATHS    TO    THE    CITY    OF    GOD 

of  Jacob,  by  the  eye  of  David,  the  glance  of  Isaiah, 
the  vision  of  Malachi,  "a  remnant"  saw  behind  His 
hohness,  as  its  ground  and  reason,  the  Love  of 
God.  The  law  which  was  holy  was  Love's  law. 
This  truth  flashed  out  to  whatever  eye  had  so  long 
and  so  obediently  looked  upon  His  holiness  that  it 
could  see  Love.  Through  many  blunders  and  mis- 
conceptions of  God,  this  one  fact  of  His  holiness 
had  led  Israel,  until  the  son  of  a  priest  uttered  his 
message,  in  tones  in  which  holiness  and  love  were 
one.  In  the  Son  of  Zacharias,  the  old  sent  its 
prophet  forth,  with  lips  eloquent  of  the  new.  John 
the  Baptist  came 

"John  than  which  man,  a  sadder  or  a  greater 
Not  till  this  day  has  been  of  woman  born, 
John,  like  some  iron  peak,  by  the  Creator 
Fired  with  the  red  glow  of  the  rushing  morn. 

"This,  when  the  sun  shall  rise  and  overcome  it. 
Stands  in  his  shining  desolate  and  bare, 
Yet,  not  the  less  the  inexorable  summit 
Flamed  him  his  signal  to  the  happier  air." 

This  child  of  the  past  knew  the  river  of  Ezekiel's 
vision — the  river  which  had  run  into  the  life  of 
Israel  from  beneath  the  temple  of  God.  But  God 
had  led  man  on  to  see  something  more  than  his 
heart  could  find  in  the  temple.  Henceforth  the 
highest  inspiration  of  humanity  was  to  proceed  from 
the  "throne  of  God  and  of  the  Lamb."  The  old 
sacrifices  had  kept  conscience  alive.  A  nobler  sense 
of  the  holiness  of  God,  and  a  deeper  consciousness 
of  human  sinfulness  had  grown  with  each  new  altar. 


RIVER    OF    JOHN'S    VISION       61 

until  man  saw  that  what  God  wanted  was  personal 
holiness  and  not  sacrifice.  But  directly  man  saw 
that  God  must  then  make  the  sacrifice.  Behind  all 
this  symbolism  stood  the  fact  that  God  was  Love; 
that  His  law,  which  man  had  broken,  was  Love's 
law ;  that  Love  Divine  must  do  the  work  of  redemp- 
tion. When  that  sacrifice  was  made,  God  spoke 
more  profoundly  to  the  soul  which  He  had  led,  and, 
in  Christ  God  said  not,  "Be  ye  holy,  for  I  am  holy," 
but  "Love  Me,  for  I  have  loved  you.  Here  is  My 
Love  in  my  Crucified  Son,  whom  I  make  your 
brother.  This  is  My  beloved  Son  in  whom  I  am 
well  pleased."  The  Paschal  Lamb  appeared  again; 
but  God  offered  it.  The  Temple  and  its  sacrifice 
were  gone  forever;  for  the  one  perfect  sacrifice 
had  come.  John — this  Child  of  the  Temple — saw 
it  and  understood,  for,  when  his  eye  fell  upon  Jesus 
in  the  crowd,  he  said :  "Behold  the  Lamb  of  God 
that  taketh  away  the  sin  of  the  world."  From  that 
hour  the  enthronement  of  God  and  the  Lamb  began 
in  human  heart.  The  Christian  dynamic  had  come. 
Eden  had  gone,  and  now  the  temple  began  to  dis- 
appear. And  the  river  flowed,  not  out  from  Eden, 
or  out  from  the  temple  of  God,  but  "from  the  throne 
of  God  and  of  the  Lamb," 

"The  Law,"  says  St.  Paul,  "was  our  school- 
master to  bring  us  to  Christ."  The  fact,  which  the 
Jew  saw  behind  the  law,  was  the  Personal  Right- 
eousness. This  he  could  see  distinctly;  this  he  saw 
so  distinctly  that  Simeon  was  ready  to  depart  in 
peace  when  Christ  was  born.    It  is  one  of  the  most 


62    PATHS    TO    THE    CITY    OF    GOD 

interesting  studies  to  observe  how  slowly,  yet  how 
surely,  the  prophets  of  God  aided  the  evolution  of 
this  truth.  The  Jew  had  a  great  promise,  which 
stood  up  in  the  spiritual  life  of  Israel  like  a  glass 
rod  which  a  chemist  puts  into  a  solution.  Crystal 
after  crystal  was  formed  upon  it  of  the  same  trans- 
parent significance.  At  last,  in  David,  Isaiah,  and 
Ezekiel,  this  Messianic  hope  became  more  and  more 
identified  with  the  new-coming  era  of  which  the 
deepest  piety  had  spoken,  as  it  had  been  made 
conscious  of  God's  love,  Moses  had  spoken  of  a  new 
prophet.  That  prophet  to  come  had  already  become 
a  new  law-giver  of  the  expectant  souls.  Isaiah  and 
Micah  seem  iconclasts,  until  we  see  that  their  view 
of  sacrifice  grows  out  of  their  deeper  insight  into 
the  real  character  of  God.  Surely  man's  awful 
experience  with  sin,  since  he  lost  his  innocence,  had 
revealed  much  of  God,  which  he  could  not  know 
except  by  being  holy.  In  God's  forgiveness,  Love 
had  always  stood  forth.  God  had  always  been  a 
redeeming  God.  Love  began  to  assert  its  supremacy 
in  Israel's  conception  of  the  Eternal  One.  The 
law  was  full  of  prophecy.  Alone,  it  could  not  help 
up  the  man  who  had  disobeyed;  it  could  not  regen- 
erate. Still  God  called  Israel  to  faith;  and  still 
Israel  believed  in  God.  At  last  the  hour  struck. 
God  is  Love;  and  when  Love  comes,  God  Himself 
comes.  No  longer  is  it  a  revelation  by  embodiment 
in  a  temple,  but  by  the  Incarnation.  God  Himself 
comes,  as  Dying,  Redeeming  Love.  Henceforth, 
"Love  is  the  fulfilling  of  the  law."     Henceforth, 


RIVER    OF    JOHN'S    VISION       63 

"the  love  of  Christ  constraineth  us."  The  veil  of 
the  temple  is  rent  in  twain,  as  Christ  most  perfectly 
manifests  the  Father.  No  longer  does  the  river 
flow,  as  of  old,  out  of  Eden  into  the  garden,  or  out 
of  the  temple  of  God  into  the  dry  land,  but  it  pro- 
ceedeth  out  of  "the  throne  of  God  and  of  the 
Lamb." 

So  much  for  the  fulfilling  of  the  Old  Testament 
motive  power  in  the  New.  Had  this  Christian 
dynamic — the  love  of  Christ — energy  to  supplant 
the  ethical  forces  of  Paganism  ?    Let  us  see. 

Virtue  is  like  "eloquence,"  which,  says  Hume, 
"is  best  taught  by  examples,"  and,  certainly,  moral 
power,  in  its  rise  and  development,  must  always 
wait  for  personal  illustration  to  emphasize  its  eras, 
and  to  fix  its  variations  long  enough  for  the  slow 
intellect  to  see  and  comprehend.  An  almost  classic 
example  comes  to  our  relief  here  and  will  help  to 
rescue  us  from  the  vagueness  which,  like  morning 
cloud,  always  hangs  about  the  sunrise  of  Christian 
ethics,  after  the  long  night  of  Paganism  is  so  far 
spent  that  the  day  is  at  hand.  I  mean  Saint 
Augustine.  It  is  especially  fitting  that  to  us  who 
study  the  holy  city,  the  great  author  of  "The  City  of 
God"  should  furnish,  in  himself,  an  illustration  of 
the  difference  between  the  ethics  of  Plato  and  the 
ethics  of  Jesus,  the  Christ.  Not  the  less  interesting 
is  he,  because  there  seems  to  linger  in  the  treatise 
which  he  wrote  on  the  "City  of  God,"  a  hopeless- 
ness of  its  earthly  realization  from  which  he  could, 
at  least,  get  no  relief  in  Plato's  Republic — a  hope- 


64    PATHS    TO    THE    CITY    OF    GOD 

lessness  found  nowhere  in  the  vision  of  the  exiled 
John.  With  Augustine,  we  stand  where  the  hosts 
of  Alaric  were  making  Rome  quake  with  terror 
and  the  empire  totter  with  fear.  Instantly,  to  his 
splendid  soul,  there  came  the  pious  reflection,  that 
the  City  of  God  was  not  to  touch  this  storm-beaten 
earth  with  its  heavenly  society;  but  his  august 
fancy  saw  her  giant  domes  lifting  themselves  in 
the  far  future,  beyond  the  distracted  flight  of  Roman 
eagles,  in  the  untroubled  territory  of  the  blest. 
John's  vision  is  comprehensive,  at  once,  of  a  celestial 
society,  and  a  redeemed  earth.  His  City  of  God  is 
to  descend  into  human  life,  and,  as  every  man  was 
to  be  prepared  to  live  on  earth  the  more  surely 
because  he  was  prepared  to  live  in  heaven,  so  as  the 
city  came  down  with  its  spirit,  its  laws,  and  polity, 
now  into  this  soul  now  into  that,  it  was  not  only 
to  fit  him  for  heaven,  making  him  a  citizen  of  the 
New  Jerusalem,  but  also,  it  was  to  so  abide  in  him 
and  govern  him,  while  here,  that  he  would  be  a 
blessing  to  the  world.  Thus  should  come  "the  new 
heavens  and  the  new  earth,  wherein  dwelleth  right- 
eousness." Nevertheless,  Augustine,  with  all  his 
Roman  theology,  is  an  illustration  of  a  soul  in  the 
passage  into  Christianity  from  the  classicalism,  to 
which  there  are  so  many  pathetic  returns  in  our 
unquiet  day.  Paganism  in  Patricius  was  his  father; 
Christianity  in  Monica  was  his  mother.  Scholar, 
thinker,  sinner — he  incarnated  the  genius  of  dis- 
solving Paganism,  and  stood  thus  until  the  new 
moral  motive  reached  his  will,  hitherto  untamed,  and 


RIVER    OF    JOHN'S    VISION       65 

then,  Augustine  lay  a  captive  at  the  feet  of  Jesus, 
to  rise  the  most  stalwart  spiritual  and  intellectual 
force  in  contemporary  Christendom.  He  had  read 
Plato;  and  doubtless,  with  his  master  had  waited 
for  "one,  be  it  God  or  God-inspired  man,  to  teach 
us  our  religious  duties,  and,  as  Athene  in  Homer 
said  to  Diomed,  to  take  away  the  darkness  from  our 
eyes."  He  waited,  only,  until,  as  a  sinner,  he  saw 
the  Christ.  Three  of  his  sayings  will  emphasize 
our  point.  "Plato,"  said  this  penetrative  Platonist, 
showed  me  the  true  God,  Jesus  Christ  showed  me 
the  way  to  Him."  All  of  Plato's  intellectual  visions 
did  not  make  up  a  moral  motive  power,  for  this 
soul,  wandering  in  twilight  and  sold  into  sin.  A 
power  must  touch  him  which  was  both  human  and 
Divine;  one  calm  fact  must  stand  between  his  dis- 
quieted and  dark  spirit  and  the  serene  light.  That 
power  must  be  the  light  itself.  One  precious  holi- 
ness must  come  to  his  unholy  heart,  and  redeem  it 
out  of  evil,  bring  it  up  to  goodness,  yea,  start  within 
it  a  goodness  of  its  own.  That  one  holy  thing  must 
be  able  to  touch  with  one  hand  of  saving  the  fallen 
man,  with  the  other  the  stainless  Throne.  To  do 
that,  it  must  be  the  All  Holy  "God  in  Christ  recon- 
ciling the  world  unto  Himself."  That  power  which 
rouses  into  life  is  the  motive  power  which  will  impel 
moral  living.  He  could  not  find  it  in  Plato.  Plato 
had  said:  "We  must  lay  hold  of  the  best  human 
opinion,  in  order  that,  borne  upon  it  like  as  on  a 
raft,  we  may  sail  over  the  dangerous  sea  of  life, 
unless  we  can  find  a  stronger  boat,  or  some  word  of 


66    PATHS    TO    THE    CITY   OF   GOD 

God,  which  will  more  surely  and  safely  carry  us." 
Augustine,  ancient  or  modern,  finds  no  redemption 
in  "opinions" — the  best  human  opinion  condemns 
him.  The  midnight's  idea  of  itself,  or  of  the  sun, 
does  not  make  noon.  No  "stronger  boat"  comes  in 
sight.  No  "word  of  God"  speaks.  Augustine  told  it 
all,  years  afterward.  No  one  hears  Christ  call,  in 
these  books:  "Come  unto  Me,  all  ye  that  labor." 
Laboring  to  be  good,  effort  to  be  true,  task-doing 
to  be  righteous  with  a  load  of  unforgiven  sin  on  its 
back — this  was  the  motiveless,  hard-worked  moral- 
ism  of  antiquity,  which  longed  for  some  voice,  for 
which  conscience  had  respect  to  say,  as  it  took  away 
the  intolerable  burden  of  remembered  years :  "Come 
unto  me,  all  ye  that  labor  and  are  heavy  laden,  and  I 
will  give  you  rest." 

Together,  Judaism  and  Classicalism  stood,  when 
the  new  moral  motive  power  came  into  the  life  of 
man,  from  the  cross  of  Christ.  How  truly  does 
every  life,  blessed  by  its  influence,  help  us  to  see  the 
history  of  evil  and  its  defeat!  Take  this  single 
invitation  to  the  hard-worked  and  successful  moral- 
ist. The  cross  asks,  compels  his  trust.  It  accom- 
plishes its  miracle  in  the  soul,  when  it  gets  the  man, 
who,  by  self-willed  ambition,  trustless,  laborious, 
eating  of  the  tree  of  the  knowledge  of  good  and 
evil,  has  failed  to  trust  God's  love  and  to  live  by 
trust.  The  old  tree  of  life  reappears  only  where  the 
river  flows  out  of  the  "throne  of  God  and  of  the 
Lamb."  The  soul's  trust  begins,  when  it  sees  Christ 
trusting  the  Father  there.     So  clearly  did  the  un- 


RIVER    OF    JOHN'S    VISION       67 

wearied  eye  of  the  buffeted  Christ  see  that  His  cross 
would  break  down  the  self-will  of  men  and  compel 
trust,  that  when  all  was  dark,  in  that  moment  of 
interior  glory  which  sent  its  light  past  the  cross  and 
through  the  grave,  he  startled  the  black  heavens  in 
which  seemed  to  play  the  lightning  bolts  of  wrath 
by  saying:  "And  I,  if  I  be  lifted  up  from  the  earth, 
will  draw  all  men  unto  Me."  He  knew  that  Love 
slain  would  make  the  City  of  God  a  reaHty,  and  from 
that  moment  the  enthroned  Lamb  was  the  light 
thereof,  the  source  of  the  ethical  power  of  time  and 
eternity. 

So  Augustine  coming  to  the  cross  of  Christ, 
out  of  the  atmosphere  of  Cicero's  Hortensius,  which, 
he  said,  made  him  "burn  with  an  incredible  ardor," 
"to  remount  from  earthly  things  to  God,"  a  man  in 
whom  classicalism  had  failed  to  find  an  ally  with 
God,  joins  Saul  of  Tarsus,  an  intolerant  Jew,  who 
rises  from  the  dust  of  a  Damascus  road  to  be  the 
missioner  of  an  all-inclusive  moral  force.  Augustine 
calls  "Christian  virtue  the  order  of  love,"  as  he  steps 
upon  the  shores  of  a  land,  which  is  to  have  Alfred, 
Shakespeare,  Harry  Vane,  and  the  late  Lord  Shaftes- 
bury. Saul  of  Tarsus  encounters  shipwreck  and 
confronts  kings,  saying:  "The  Love  of  Christ  con- 
straineth  us."  Not  less  attractive  is  this  motive  to 
the  mind  of  genius  in  our  time.  Amidst  the  sickly 
revival  of  Paganism,  which,  with  enfeebled  voice, 
weeps  in  Arnold  or  revels  in  Swinburne,  the  voice  of 
Augustine  seems  once  again  to  speak,  as  the  vision 
of  the  cross  comes  to  the  eye  of  Robert  Browning : 


68    PATHS    TO    THE    CITY    OF    GOD 

"  The  very  God!     Think,  Abib,  dost  thou  think  ? 
So  the  All-Great  were  the  All-Loving,  too! 
So,  through  the  thunder  comes  a  human  voice, 
Saying:  '  Oh  heart  I  made,  a  heart  beats  here! 
Face  my  hands  fashioned,  see  it  in  myself! 
Thou  hast  no  power,  nor  mayest  conceive  of  mine. 
But  love  I  gave  thee,  with  Myself  to  love, 
And  thou  must  love  me  who  have  died  for  thee.'  " 

Thus  we  see  Christianity — not  a  new  precept; 
O !  how  far  from  the  Christ  is  all  this  comparison  of 
precepts — we  see  a  Personal  Power,  enabling  you 
and  me  to  live  our  life  by  the  life  of  God  in  us. 
Again  we  have  the  "tree  of  life,"  lost  once  with  our 
Eden.  Dear  friends!  let  us  bring  our  powerless 
lives  to  Him,  who  is  the  Life  of  men.  Then  shall 
there  glow  in  us  the  city,  whose  light  is  the  Lamb. 
Ours,  then,  is  a  holiness — not  an  innocence — heroic 
and  Christ-like,  whose  tree  of  life  is  watered  by  a 
river  flowing  from  the  throne  of  God  and  of  the 
Lamb.  The  first  Adam,  in  whom  all  died,  lost  the 
sight  of  that  tree  of  life,  by  self-will;  the  second 
Adam,  in  whom  all  live,  brings  that  tree  of  life  in 
sight  again,  by  His  perfect  obedience.  His  utter 
loss  of  will  is  in  the  Divine  will — "not  my  will,  but 
Thine  be  done."  Innocence  lost  in  the  first  Adam, 
by  trust  of  self,  and  holiness  gained  in  the  second 
Adam,  by  trust  of  God !  God's  law,  which  is 
the  method  of  Love,  broken  in  the  first  Adam 
by  disobedience;  God's  law,  His  expressed  Love, 
honored,  exhibited  in  the  second  Adam,  "obedient 
unto  death,  even  the  death  of  the  cross!"  All  the 
world's  self-will  was  met  and  vanquished  by  one 


RIVER    OF    JOHN'S    VISION       69 

Self-sacrifice — and  such  a  self-sacrifice  it  was,  as  to 
win  the  human  heart.  The  consent  of  the  governed  is 
obtained.  In  redemption  is  motive  power.  The 
love  which  honors  law  makes  the  heart  of  man 
responsive  to  a  law  of  love,  forever.  The  power, 
which  lifts  a  man  upon  his  feet,  impels  him  on. 
Heaven  must  be  *'a  city."  Eden  was  not  ultimate. 
Holiness  and  Love  are  inclusive  of  innocence  and 
bliss.  A  city  of  God,  a  holy  city — for  Divine  Social- 
ism inheres  in  Christianity.  It  is  impossible  to  love 
God,  as  Father,  and  not  to  feel  and  labor  for  the 
Brotherhood.  "Who  is  weak  and  I  am  not  weak," 
cries  Paul.  "Who  is  offended  and  I  bum  not" — 
that  is  the  Christian  socialism,  which  we  will  have, 
or  we  will  have  the  soul-destroying  monster  which 
we  dread.  "Ye  are  my  witnesses,"  said  the  self- 
sacrificing  Christ.  When  at  last,  the  city  draws  in 
sight,  and  the  light  from  the  slain  Lamb  throws  its 
mighty  streamers  far  up  into  the  eternity,  you  and  I 
shall  see  it  and  rejoice,  only  when  we  have  seen 
this  same  Lamb — "as  it  had  been  slain" — in  the 
persecuted  righteousness,  the  outcast  holiness,  the 
homeless  truth,  for  which  we  have  been  willing  to 
go  to  Calvary.  Only  when  Christ's  holiness  has 
made  us  holy,  do  we  "eat  of  the  tree  of  life"  in  the 
city  of  God.  Then,  humanity,  to  us  is  sacred.  And 
the  river  of  the  water  of  life,  ever  after,  flows  out  of 
"the  throne  of  God  and  of  the  Lamb." 


IV 
THE   CITY   LIETH    FOUR-SQUARE 

"  Her  sins,  which  are  many,  are  forgiven,  for  she  loved 
much."    Luke  vii.  47. 

"  For  we  are  saved  by  hope."    Romans  viii.  24. 

"  But  God  be  thanked  that  ye  were  the  slaves  of  sin  but 
ye  have  obeyed  /ro?n  the  heart  that  form  of  doctrine  which 
was  delivered  you."    Romans  vi.  17. 

"  The  righteous  shall  go  into  life  eternal."    Matthew 

XXV.  46. 

"  The  city  lieth  four-square."    Revelation  xxi.  16. 
"  Narrow  is  the  way."    Matthew  vii.  14. 

|ATHER  bewildering,  you  think,  to  a  plain 
and  sincere  man,  are  these  guideboards, 
which  the  heart  seeking  the  way  of  salvation 
is  advised  to  read.  For,  in  all  ages  and  amidst  all 
peoples,  in  vague  dreams  or  in  clear  thinking,  the 
human  heart  has  been  seeking  the  highway  which 
measures  the  distance  between  what  it  is  and  what 
it  ought  to  be.  Vocabularies  differ ;  each  of  them  has 
come  into  existence  with  the  appearance  of  some  new 
impulse  toward  holiness.  But  they  have  not  changed 
for  mankind  that  master  passion  which  has  ruled 
from  the  first  his  highest  and  truest  hours,  and  the 
dream  of  goodness  is  yet  more  regnant  than  any 
earthy  weight  upon  the  soul.  It  resists  all  the 
downward  gravitations.  Any  man  out  of  his  Eden 
is  homeless,  and  the  soul  looks  toward  something 
with  a  river  and  a  tree  of  life  in  it.     It  must  live  by 

70 


CITY    LIETH    FOUR-SQUARE     71 

faith  and  trust;  and  its  faith  and  trust  must  be 
watered  as  a  tree  by  an  adequate  moral  motive 
power.  Times  in  his  history  there  have  been  and 
even  yet  are,  when  man  has  been  only 

"  An  infant  crying  in  the  night, 
An  infant  crying  for  the  light. 
And  with  no  language  but  a  cry." 

Nevertheless,  so  "near  is  grandeur  to  our  dust,  so 
nigh  is  God  to  man,"  that,  in  some  untranslated 
tongue,  he  has  ever  been  saying  to  his  soul : 

"  And  O!  for  the  man  to  rise  in  me, 
That  the  man  that  I  am  may  cease  to  be." 

Each  man  repeats  this  history. 

Humanity  in  general  has  left  its  best  literature 
and  art  as  testimony  to  the  fruitfulness  of  the  ever- 
growing faith  in  this  long  search.  There  have 
come  in  alongside  his  devious  wanderings,  fresh 
facts,  or  dim  suggestions  oftentimes,  which  have 
given  to  the  unwearied  searcher  new  clews  and  have 
opened  up  to  him  new  roadways  along  which  he  has 
pushed  his  unflagging  pursuit.  Out  of  these  have 
come  new  words — fresh  names  for  the  old  mystery 
and  a  right  terminology  for  the  method  of  the 
search.  Egypt,  ages  ago,  felt  the  busy  hands  of  men 
toiling  at  the  pyramids,  or  carving  the  huge  Sphinx 
from  the  solid  rock;  and  men  see  to-day  that  the 
Sphinx-secret  is  at  root  the  secret  of  Greece  and  of 
Rome,  the  treasure  of  the  Northern  myth  and  of  the 
Southern  dream.  Man  is  after  the  high  self,  of 
which  even  his  loneliness  is  the  prophecy.     Behind 


72    PATHS    TO    THE    CITY    OF    GOD 

him  is  the  Garden  of  Eden ;  before  him,  what  is  far 
greater,  the  City  of  God,  of  which  every  true  seer 
has  had  visions.  That  Garden  of  Eden  and  its 
inhabitants  may  have  been  so  rich  as  to  justify  the 
remark  of  one  of  the  most  eloquent  of  men,  when  he 
described  Aristotle  as  but  the  "wreck  of  an  Adam" 
and  Athens  but  "the  ruin  of  a  paradise."  Reason 
and  hope  have  never  accepted  this  idea,  though  a 
vanishing  theology  has  reared  a  structure  upon  it. 
When  humanity  was  lowliest,  God  flung  into  the 
disaster  the  dream  of  the  loftiest  future,  Man  fell 
from  naturalism  to  rise  into  civilization,  "where 
sin  abounded,  grace  did  much  more  abound." 
The  most  interesting  thing  in  the  wreck  of  Eden  is 
the  unfailing  word — "the  seed  of  the  woman  shall 
bruise  the  serpent's  head."  It  must  be  confessed 
that  man  has  dreams  of  something  higher  than  a 
garden  to  which  he  may  return, — yea,  even  in  his 
sociology,  he  anticipates  a  City  of  God  which  is  to 
include  all  the  meanings  of  the  tragic  history  which 
lies  between  the  bowers  of  Eden  and  the  towers  of 
the  New  Jerusalem. 

For  that  forelooking  toward  the  truest  destiny 
of  humanity,  the  Jew  had  the  finest  eye.  Compare 
the  book  of  Job  with  the  Sphinx,  or  the  Apostle's 
city  of  God  with  Plato's  Republic,  and  you  see  at 
once  how  the  stream  of  history  which  was  led  by 
the  Jew  became  deeper  far  than  those  which  followed 
the  acute  Egyptian  or  the  splendid  Greek.  Our 
modern  Paganism  is  not  at  all  equal  to  theirs,  and 
yet  it  teaches  the  same  lesson.    No  one,  I  think,  can 


CITY    LIETH    FOUR-SQUARE     73 

read  Matthew  Arnold's  revivification  of  Stoicism 
and  Bayard  Taylor's  "Prince  Deucalion,"  and  listen 
seriously  to  the  unspoken  throb  of  humanity  which 
comes  when  the  future  lifts  in  sight  to  the  genius  of 
the  half-Hellenic,  half-Christian  imagination,  with- 
out discovering  how  far  short  Deucalion  or  Em- 
pedocles  comes  of  piercing,  with  "daylit  eye  glance 
through  the  clouds,"  unto  that  consummate  state  of 
man — a  citizen  of  a  "holy  city,"  whose  light  is  a 
"slain  Lamb."  Nay,  said  Gladstone;  "For  the 
exercise  of  strength  and  skill;  for  the  achievements 
and  for  the  enchantments  of  wit,  of  eloquence,  of 
art,  of  genius,  for  the  imperial  games  of  politics  and 
of  war,  let  us  seek  them  on  the  shores  of  Greece. 
But  if  the  first  among  the  problems  of  life  be  how  to 
establish  the  peace  and  restore  the  balance  of  our 
inward  being;  if  the  highest  of  all  conditions  in  the 
existence  of  the  creature  be  his  aspect  toward  the 
God  to  whom  he  owes  his  being  and  in  whose  great 
hand  he  stands,  then  let  us  make  our  search  else- 
where. All  the  wonders  of  the  Greek  civihzation 
are  less  wonderful  than  is  the  single  book  of  Psalms, 
Palestine  was  weak  and  despised,  always  obscure, 
oftentimes  and  long  trodden  down  beneath  the  feet 
of  imperious  masters.  On  the  other  hand  Greece  for 
a  thousand  years,  'confident  of  foreign  purposes,' 
repelled  every  invader  from  her  shores.  Fostering 
her  strength  in  the  keen  air  of  freedom,  she  defied 
and  at  length  overthrew  the  mightiest  of  existing 
empires;  and  when,  finally,  she  felt  the  resistless 
grasp  of  the  masters  of  all  the  world,  then,  too,  at 


74    PATHS    TO    THE    CITY    OF    GOD 

the  very  moment  of  their  subjugation,  she  herself 
subdued  to  her  hterature,  arts,  language,  and 
manners.  Palestine,  in  a  word,  had  no  share  of  the 
glories  of  our  race,  while  they  blazed  on  every  page 
of  the  history  of  Greece  with  an  overpowering 
splendor.  Greece  had  valor,  policy,  reason,  genius, 
wisdom,  wit;  she  had  all,  in  a  word,  that  this  world 
could  give  her;  but  the  flowers  of  paradise,  which 
blossom  at  best  but  thinly,  blossom  in  Palestine 
alone."  We  must  go  to  the  Bible  for  thoroughness 
in  matters  of  the  soul's  progress. 

Of  the  direction  of  the  progress  and  development 
of  moral  motive  power  in  the  Old  and  New  Testa- 
ment we  may  have  found  a  suggestive  hint  in  other 
bibles.  But  to  see  the  way  into  the  city  of  God  for 
the  soul,  to  see  what  must  occur  in  the  soul  that  it 
may  reach  it,  it  is  well  to  inquire  what  this  Jewish 
conception  of  man's  highest  goal  was,  and  to  note 
its  truth. 

Its  whole  significance  came  from  the  sense  of  the 
Supreme  Holiness,  which  Israel  had  and  developed 
its  vision  of  the  righteousness  of  God.  Matthew 
Arnold  has  truly  characterized  the  Old  Testament 
as  Israel's  magnificent  establishment  of  the  theme, 
"Righteousness  is  salvation;"  the  New,  as  "the  per- 
fect elucidation  by  Jesus  of  what  righteousness  is 
and  how  salvation  is  won."  The  Jew,  often  quite 
unconsciously,  confessed  this  thought  at  the  roots  of 
his  life — if  God  were  righteous,  and  righteousness 
was  His  glory,  to  the  Jew,  then  man's  sense  of 
discord,  his  painful  consciousness  of  being  what  he 


CITY    LIETH    FOUR-SQUARE     75 

ought  not  to  be  came  from  his  personal  unrighteous- 
ness. There  the  eye  of  Israel  caught  sight  of  the 
real  difficulty  in  the  domain  of  morals.  No  nation 
ever  so  saw  God  "glorious  in  holiness"  and  confessed 
in  His  presence  the  splendid  ardor  of  the  soul's  desire 
to  be  what  it  ought  to  be,  as  did  Israel.  But  Israel 
went  farther  than  a  confession  in  sacrifice  and  in 
prophecy,  in  law  and  in  psalm;  she  proclaimed 
reconciliation  with  God  as  the  one  necessary  thing 
in  the  realization  of  that  desire.  Sin  appeared  in  its 
true  light,  as  the  hateful  destroyer  of  man's  actual 
greatness  and  goodness.  Sin,  admitted  into  personal 
character,  insinuating  itself  amidst  the  possibilities 
of  the  life  it  occupied,  winding  itself  amid  all  the 
intricacies  and  sublimities  of  the  soul,  like  another 
serpent,  ruled  the  heart  and  life  and  made  the  temple 
of  man,  of  which  it  had  become  the  slimy  and 
tyrannous  occupant,  a  thing  depraved,  disgraced,  and 
ruined  for  the  lofty  uses  for  which  God  had  created 
it.  With  such  a  conception,  the  Jew  saw  that  man 
must  attain  his  true  destiny  under  this  Supreme 
holiness,  by  being  saved  from  his  sin.  "Salvation," 
therefore,  is  the  word  which  rings  through  all 
Hebrew  history.  "Salvation"  is  the  triumphant  note 
which  calls  them  to  arms,  the  star  which  shines  in 
every  midnight,  the  name  which  Israel  writes  for 
aspiring  humanity  forever  to  read  upon  the  forehead 
of  her  God. 

Of  course,  Israel  was  but  a  child.  The  nation 
was  in  kindergarten  and  could  use  only  that 
language.     She  had  no  large  idea  .of  humanity. 


76    PATHS    TO    THE    CITY    OF    GOD 

But  Israel  was  so  faithful  to  her  "election,"  that  a 
more  adequate  idea  was  sure  to  come  in  later  times. 
She  herself  was  humanity  at  that  critical  point.  She 
had  no  such  deep  conception  of  salvation  from  sin 
as  came  to  loftier  ages.  But  she  was  sure  to  reach 
it,  advancing  ever  by  her  crude  faith.  "Deliverance" 
to  her  often  meant  "deliverance"  from  her  trouble- 
some enemies  round  about.  It  was  narrow  and 
superficial.  But  Israel  was  true  and  alone  of  all 
peoples.  She  would  first  find  the  truth.  Now 
every  serious  student  of  the  soul's  problems  feels  that 
the  first  gleam  of  solving  light  came  from  the  bosom 
of  that  nation.  At  last  Israel  saw  clearly  that  the 
path  to  that  goal,  of  which  Orient  and  Occident 
had  dreamed,  was,  first  of  all,  "deliverance  from 
sin." 

Here  now  is  a  man  of  Israel,  under  the  spell  of 
a  fresh  vision.  John  gave  a  picture  of  that  goal  as 
a  "holy  city."  The  holy  city  lies  four-square,  with 
gates  on  either  side.  It  is  symmetrical,  complete. 
Its  very  completeness  fronts  every  quarter  of  human 
life — incomplete,  unsymmetrical  as  my  life  and  yours 
is.  It  fronts  my  imperfections  and  yours  with  in- 
vitations to  its  four-square  perfectness,  with  gates 
leading  into  itself.  We  cannot  say  it  too  often, 
holiness  is  much  else,  but  it  is  wholeness.  It  is  also 
quite  as  philosophically  as  philologically,  health. 
"Wilt  thou  be  made  whole?"  was  an  invitation  ad- 
dressed to  human  incompleteness,  by  completeness 
in  Christ.  It  was  health  (holth)  opening  in  itself 
the  escape  from  unhealth.    It  was  the  "holy  city," 


CITY   LIETH   FOUR-SQUARE     77 

"four-square"  in  symmetry  and  completeness,  show- 
ing its  gateways  on  every  side  to  human  need. 

Let  us  study  these  four  sides  with  their  gates — 
the  sides  which  we  know  in  the  story  of  Christ's  life. 
It  may  make  it  plain  that  deliverance  from  sin  is 
always  accomplished  through  one's  getting  hold  of 
holiness — the  negative  is  taken  up  in  the  positive; 
that  holiness  means  wholeness  and  that  every  man, 
therefore,  who  comes  into  the  holy  city,  comes  in  on 
the  side  of  Christ's  completeness  which  fronts  his 
own  incompleteness.  In  the  process  of  salvation  in 
Christ,  we  are  made  whole  and  are  fitted  to  enter 
a  holy  city — "Narrow,"  after  all,  "is  the  way." 
First,  then,  let  us  try  to  understand  these  four  sides, 
illustrated  and  perhaps  only  illustrated  in  the  four 
texts  which  I  have  chosen.  At  first  they  seem  to 
bewilder. 

I.  Here  is  a  woman  on  the  road  to  the  city  of 
God,  to  good  character,  to  heaven;  she  is  seemingly 
sure  of  her  safe  arrival.  Let  us  ask  of  her  concern- 
ing the  way.  Are  we  saved  by  love,  or  by  hope,  or 
by  obedience,  or  by  actions  of  goodness  ?  Then  she 
tells  her  simple  story.  She  says:  "I  was  a  poor 
fallen  woman  in  a  great  city,  without  anything  good 
to  love  or  to  have  faith  in.  Every  pure  person  got  so 
far  away  from  me,  that  when  I  had  impulses  toward 
purity  and  wanted  to  be  delivered  from  my  impure 
life,  I  had  no  human  hand  to  take  hold  of,  and  I 
could  only  rise  up  a  little  way  by  my  own  strength 
and  then  fall  back  again.  One  day  I  heard  that 
Jesus  of  Nazareth  was  at  the  house  of  a  Pharisee 


78    PATHS    TO    THE    CITY    OF    GOD 

and  I  was  filled  with  the  desire  to  see  Him.  I  could 
not  resist  going,  though  I  was  sure  the  Pharisee 
would  drive  me  out  of  his  house.  But  I  took  my 
alabaster  box  of  ointment,  and  with  it  in  my  hand, 
I  stole  noiselessly  up  behind  Him  where  He  sat  at 
meat.  My  heart  was  breaking  with  a  gladness  mixed 
with  agony.  I  could  not  keep  the  tears  back  as  I 
saw  the  difference  between  His  stainlessness  and  my 
stained  soul,  and  yet  I  felt  that  He  would  help  me. 
I  washed  His  blessed  feet  with  my  tears  and  wiped 
them  with  my  flowing  hair.  I  anointed  them  with 
the  ointment — a  fragrant  memory  of  my  wretched 
life.  There  stood  the  indignant  Pharisee,  and  I  saw 
he  knew  me.  He  looked  into  the  face  of  Jesus,  and 
his  face  spoke  the  thought  he  had  that  Jesus  was  not 
a  prophet,  because  He  had  not  known  me  and  thrust 
me  forth.  But  Jesus  soon  spoke.  As  He  talked,  I 
saw  how  great  were  my  sins,  yet,  when  I  saw  it  all — 
the  blackness  and  horror  of  the  past — He  said  to 
the  Pharisee:  'Her  sins,  which  are  many,  are 
forgiven,  for  she  loved  much;  but  to  whom  little  is 
forgiven,  the  same  loveth  little.'  You  ask  me  the 
path  to  heaven?  I  then  thought  it  was  Love  by 
which  I  had  come  to  a  pure  womanhood.  'Her  sins 
are  forgiven,  for  she  loved  much.'  My  love  for  my 
Saviour  did  it,  I  said.  But  that  was  only  the  side 
of  the  holy  city  where  I  found  an  open  gate.  I  was 
sure  my  salvation  was  in  my  love.  But  He  said 
unto  me  as  I  lingered  to  hear  His  voice :  Thy  faith 
hath  saved  thee.'  " 

And  just  a  little  way  behind  this  woman,  comes 


CITY   LIETH    FOUR-SQUARE     79 

what  was  once  poor  blind  Bartimeus,  and  now, 
happy  with  his  new  sight,  he  tells  us  that  the  last 
thing  which  Jesus  told  him  was:  "Thy  faith  hath 
saved  thee."  As  we  stop  these  people  there  comes 
ringing  down  the  pathway  the  music  of  the  old  and 
the  new  religion :  "Thou  shalt  love  the  Lord  thy 
God  and  thy  neighbor  as  thyself."  This  is  the 
great  commandment:  "Faith,  hope,  love,  but  the 
greatest  of  these  is  love." 

II.  But  here  is  Paul — once  Saul  of  Tarsus — let 
us  ask  him  how  we  are  saved.  And  he  says  :"For  we 
are  saved  by  hope,"  and  then  he  goes  on  to  say, 
"We  have  access  by  faith,"  "We  walk  by  faith," 
"I  live  by  faith,"  and,  dying,  he  says,  "I  have  kept 
the  faith."  Faith  makes  man  hopeful,  and  hope 
saves. 

III.  Here  is  another.  He  is  one  going  away 
from  the  holy  city  despondent  and  sorrowful — the 
young  man  who  "had  great  possessions."  We  ask 
him  about  his  trouble.  He  says  as  he  tries  to  explain 
to  us  how  he  has  missed  peace  and  holiness :  "I  went 
to  the  great  teacher,  Jesus  of  Nazareth,  and  I  said : 
'Good  Master,  what  shall  I  do  to  inherit  eternal  life?' 
First,  he  asked  me,  not  about  the  commandments  at 
all,  but  he  asked  me  why  I  called  Him  good.  He 
then  said :  'There  is  none  good  but  God.'  After  He 
had  found  that  I  had  kept  the  commandments  from 
my  youth  up,  He  said :  'Thou  lackest  yet  one  thing.' 
He  amazed  me  by  saying :  'Go  sell  all  that  thou  hast 
and  give  to  the  poor.'  Of  course  that  was  an  act  of 
obedience  and  goodness  which  I  could  not  perform, 


80    PATHS    TO    THE    CITY    OF    GOD 

for  I  am  rich,  you  know."  "Obedience  in  good 
works,  obedience  in  noble  action,"  we  say,  as  the 
sorrowful  young  man  goes  his  way,  "that  is  the  way 
to  holiness."  And  yet,  as  we  think  of  this  young 
man's  lack  of  obedience,  we  see  that  it  was  truly  a 
lack  of  "faith."  Paul  says :  "The  revelation  of  the 
mystery  was  made  known  for  the  obedience  of 
faith."  That  obedience  this  boy  had  not,  because  he 
had  not  faith.  Obedience  was  the  only  side  of  the 
holy  city  which  fronted  this  youth's  unholy  life.  It 
was  his  way  to  character. 

IV.  At  last,  righteousness  seems  to  be  the 
entrance  to  the  city.  We  are  told  of  righteous  Abel 
and  righteous  Abraham.  But  like  Abraham,  the 
father  of  the  faithful,  Abel  also  seems  to  have 
believed  God  and  it  was  counted — that  is  his  faith 
"was  counted  unto  him  for  righteousness,"  We  are 
told  of  the  "righteous"  entering  "into  life  eternal." 
James  says :  "For  ye  see  how  that  by  works  a  man 
is  justified."  The  great  sermon  of  Peter  rang  with 
promise  "to  him  that  worketh  righteousness." 
"The  Kingdom  of  God  is  not  meat  or  drink,  but 
righteousness."  "Blessed  are  they  that  hunger  and 
thirst  after  righteousness,  for  they  shall  be  filled." 
"Light  is  sown  for  the  righteous."  "Awake  to 
righteousness."  "Follow  after  righteousness." 
These  are  tones  from  a  mighty  string  vibrating 
through  all  character-making  religion.  But  in  all 
this  we  must  remember  that  righteousness  comes  by 
faith.  Faith  is  the  soul  of  righteousness.  "What," 
says  Paul,  "shall  we  say  then,  that  the  Gentiles, 


CITY    LIETH    FOUR-SQUARE     81 

which  followed  not  after  righteousness,  have  at- 
tained unto  righteousness,  even  the  righteousness 
which  is  of  faith.  But  Israel,  which  followed  after 
the  law  of  righteousness,  hath  not  attained  unto  the 
law  of  righteousness.  Wherefore?  Because  they 
sought  it  not  by  faith."  Paul  speaks  also  of  the 
"seal  of  the  righteousness  by  faith."  Faith  in 
whom?  In  Christ.  "Christ,"  says  the  great  apostle, 
"is  made  unto  us  righteousness."  "Christ  is  the 
end  of  the  law  for  righteousness." 

So,  the  city  of  holiness,  the  city  of  God,  lieth 
four-square :  a  side  of  love,  a  side  of  hope,  a  side  of 
obedience,  a  side  of  righteousness.  Each  side  with 
three  gates,  and  the  gates  are  open  continually.  So 
many  sides  to  the  city  of  manhood  under  God,  and 
yet  just  one  "narrow  way"  of  entrance  through  all 
the  gates;  just  one  sort  of  gateway  on  each  of  the 
four  sides;  just  one  fact  underneath  all  true  life, 
whether  we  enter  by  love,  or  hope,  or  obedience,  or 
righteousness,  and  that  one  fact  is  faith!  Every  one 
of  the  four  sides  of  the  heavenly  city  teaches  the  old 
doctrine  of  justification  by  faith. 

I  have  stopped  so  long  at  these  points  that  you 
may  understand  a  little  better  some  apparently  un- 
accordant  facts  in  the  statements  of  the  Scriptures 
and  in  the  lives  of  good  people  about  you,  as  to  how 
men  and  women  are  saved.  These  truths  which 
have  often  perplexed  are  really  very  full  of  comfort. 
All  through  the  history  of  achieved  Christlike 
character — a  history  which  has  been  and  is  now  be- 
ing written — reflective  students  of  Christian  man- 


82    PATHS    TO    THE    CITY    OF    GOD 

hood  are  observing  human  beings  hke  themselves 
transformed  into  loftier  manhood  by  experiences 
which  appear  different  and  yet  are  wondrously 
identical  in  the  end  they  reach.  Let  us  bring  some 
of  these  cases  to  mind. 

I.  The  holy  city  seems  to  be  confronting  this 
man's  life  with  its  side  of  Love,  with  its  gates  open, 
and  if  he  is  made  holy  at  all,  it  is  through  these  love- 
gates  that  he  enters  in.  Life  has  been  dull  to  him 
and  meaningless.  He  has  yielded  to  the  appeals  of 
the  low  animalism  which  creeps  into  an  unsatisfied 
life,  and  the  beast  is  on  the  throne  in  his  nature. 
The  hosts  of  hell  have  made  a  playground  of  his 
soul.  Evil  thoughts  have  beset  him  day  and  night. 
He  has  been  a  slave  to  his  passion,  and  the  world 
has  dragged  him  along  in  dreadful  captivity.  This 
man  has  been  walking  by  your  side  it  may  be;  but 
one  day  you  noticed  the  change.  Out  from  the 
bleared  eyes  there  looked  a  new  spirit.  Forth  from 
the  tongue  which  had  been  suited  to  oaths  and 
impurity  came  the  purity  of  beautiful  thoughts  and 
the  declaration  of  immaculate  purposes.  Away 
down  under  all  his  sins  had  been  the  sin  of  loveless- 
ness.  Nothing  had  he  to  love  with  all  compre- 
hending love,  and  his  whole  being  was  in  anarchy. 
His  universe  had  no  dear  imperial  figure  walking 
through  it  and  in  it.  His  world  had  never  been  lit 
up  by  the  presence  of  one,  "the  fairest  amongst  ten 
thousand  and  the  one  altogether  lovely."  But  be- 
neath all  that  lovelessness  was  the  power  of  loving. 
It  had  never  died.    It  had  been  latent  until  it  heard 


CITY   LIETH    FOUR-SQUARE     83 

just  now  the  still  small  voice  of  unapproachable 
sweetness.  Its  eyes  now  see  a  fair  form  walking  the 
earth.  It  has  fallen  in  love  utterly  and  gladly  with 
something  lovely,  and  the  warm  clean  hand  of  love 
has  lifted  the  black  and  grimy  form  of  a  needy  soul 
up  into  his  own  fair  companionship.  "His  sins  are 
forgiven  for  he  loved  much,"  Saved  by  love! 
Yes,  he  has  taken  a  pathway  unto  the  eternal  city 
of  the  soul  which  runs  into  that  city's  glorious 
center  through  the  archway  of  love, 

II.  Here  is  another  man,  who,  in  your  count- 
ing room  or  shop,  has  had  a  similar  awakening,  yet 
through  another  quite  distinct  but  closely  related 
experience.  He  has  been  hopeless  for  himself  and 
for  mankind.  You  were  abroad  together.  Going 
over  he  liked  to  sit  on  deck,  through  day  and  night, 
and,  with  hollow  eyes,  he  seemed  to  commune  with 
the  barren  sea.  His  life  was  thus  pictured.  No 
shore  ever  wooed  him  on.  No  gleaming  fact  ever 
was  able  to  rouse  him  from  the  emptying  feeling 
which  came  now  and  then  to  assert  itself  in  words, 
that  life  was  one  large  shoreless,  vacant  sea  whose 
billows  were  monarchs  and  whose  currents  ran  no 
one  knew  why  or  where.  Out  of  this  hard  hope- 
lessness in  his  soul  grew  no  tender  flower  of 
goodness.  He  just  selfishly  looked  out  for  his 
temporal  wants,  and  let  eternity,  with  all  its 
mystery,  look  after  itself.  You  may  have  been  with 
him  and  seen  that  man  transformed  into  a  new  man. 
It  is  wonderful.  You  are  coming  back  over  the 
same  sea.     O  what  a  change !     He  has  come  to  the 


84    PATHS    TO    THE    CITY    OF    GOD 

taffrail  of  the  same  ship  and  looked  out  into  the 
storm  and  across  the  heaving  masses  of  the  sea 
beneath  him,  with  a  gallant  and  hopeful  face.  He 
is  no  longer  a  dark-browed  pessimist.  He  has  had 
a  vision  of  the  shore  in  midocean.  Over  every 
difficulty  of  the  night  he  casts  a  gleam  of  the  eternal 
day;  in  every  trough  of  the  sea  he  feels  the  solidity 
of  God's  nature  and  being  beneath  him.  He  seems 
to  stand 

"  As  one  that  after  darkness  feels 
The  twilight ;  all  the  air  is  promise-flushed 
Yet  strangely  chill,  and  though  the  sense  delight  itself 
In  sweet  deliverance,  something  in  the  blood 
Cries  for  the  sun." 

You  look  at  such  a  man  as  that,  and  you  say: 
"Yes,  Paul  is  right,  'We  are  saved  by  hope.'  "  For, 
lying  deep  beneath  all  that  man's  life,  blighting  it, 
was  the  sin  of  hopelessness  from  which  he  had  to 
be  saved  before  he  could  ever  reach  symmetrical  man- 
hood and  so  cease  sinning.  Now  he  has  caught  hold 
of  the  peerless  fact  called  Christ — a  fact  so  full  of 
greatness  and  truth  as  to  be  a  pledge  of  hope  to 
him;  and  as  he  put  his  chilly  hand  into  the  warm 
hand  which  with  ardent  hope  had  transformed  his 
coldness  into  vitality  and  power  and  he  has  been 
"saved  by  hope." 

HI.  Here  is  a  man  of  still  another  sort,  and 
with  yet  other  needs.  He  has  been  the  servant  of 
certain  moralities  of  a  purely  negative  sort,  which 
have  very  naturally  developed  him  into  a  negative 
and  harmless  character.    He,  like  all  such  men,  and 


CITY    LIETH    FOUR-SQUARE     85 

for  the  most  part,  has  been  entirely  satisfied  with 
himself.  Yet,  now  and  then,  under  the  impulse  of 
some  strong  sentiment,  he  has  felt  altogether 
unsatisfied,  and  he  has  longed  for  an  aggressive, 
positive  life  which  might  help  somebody  else  and 
do  battle  against  evil.  Constantly,  however,  has  he 
put  aside  these  interior  calls  to  duty;  always  with  a 
certain  pride  in  his  own  harmlessness  has  he 
disobeyed  the  vision,  hiding  behind  the  blunders  of 
many  disturbers  of  the  peace  which  he  values  so 
highly,  and  being  thankful,  as  such  a  man  can  be, 
that  he  is  better  than  they.  He  has  always  been 
earning  his  way  in  goodness,  as  he  thinks.  Of 
course  he  has  failed  to  see  the  outrage  upon  his  own 
nature,  which,  by  his  declining  a  positive  and 
obedient  life,  he  has  thus  perpetuated.  One  day 
there  has  come  a  voice,  whose  words  have  somehow 
echoed  throughout  the  vacancies  of  his  whole 
nature.  It  has  told  him  to  do  something  so  positive, 
so  definite,  so  costly  to  the  negative  quietude  of  his 
soul  and  to  that  self-esteem  which  thanks  heaven 
that  it  is  at  least  harmless,  that  the  proposed  task 
of  simple  obedience  in  the  direction  of  sacrifice 
works  a  crisis.  Unlike  the  young  man  who  was 
rich  and  did  not  obey,  this  man  obeys,  though  he 
has  to  turn  his  back  upon  the  seen  and  adopt  the 
unseen,  and  he  is  saved  by  his  obedience.  A  new  life 
of  positive  aims  arises,  and  a  new  career  begins  for 
his  soul. 

IV.  One  more.     Here  is  a  man  who,  by  some 
of  the  various  and  evil  influences  to  which  he  has 


86     PATHS    TO    THE    CITY    OF    GOD 

submitted  himself,  is  out  of  the  current  of  the  great 
righteousness  which  sweeps  through  events  and  men's 
souls  whether  they  will  or  not.  He  has  wronged 
himself  and  humanity  and  God,  by  resisting  the 
"power  not  ourselves  which  makes  for  righteous- 
ness." He  is  wrong,  and  right  is  against  him  as 
he  is  against  right.  Constantly  he  feels  the  support 
upon  which  he  rests  breaking  beneath  him,  and  the 
motives  which  impel  him  on  he  sees  are  driving  him 
in  the  wrong  direction.  At  length,  a  great  personal 
righteousness  stands  close  by  his  side.  The  currents 
of  its  own  satisfactoriness  and  power  enter  into  his 
unsatisfied  and  powerless  life.  He  seizes  hold  of  the 
right  personally,  in  some  desperate  moment,  and  lo ! 
it  is  a  reality  to  his  soul.  He  becomes  righteous. 
His  life — he  himself  is  transformed.  He  is  saved  by 
righteousness.  He  has  run  into  the  tower,  and 
behold  the  righteous  one  is  safe. 

So  one  man  was  saved  by  entering  into  the  city 
which  is  "four-square,"  on  the  side  of  love.  Another 
enters  on  the  side  of  hope.  Another  enters  on  the 
side  of  obedience.  Anothers  enters  on  the  side  of 
righteousness.  Gates  on  the  four  sides  of  the  city 
of  holiness  and  manhood !  And  yet  "narrow  is  the 
way."  For  you  will  notice,  first,  that  the  thing 
done  in  any  soul  which  saves  it,  as  it  passes  through 
any  of  these  gates,  is,  fundamentally,  just  what  is 
done  to  any  other  soul,  as  it  passes  through  any 
other  gate,  into  this  city  of  God. 

You  and  I,  dear  brother,  have  lost  our  Eden  of 
innocence  with  its  tree  of  life,  by  our  ambitious, 


CITY   LIETH    FOUR-SQUARE     87 

independent,  self-willed  eating  of  the  tree  of  the 
knowledge  of  good  and  evil.  We  must  get  into  the 
city  of  holiness,  where  alone  that  tree  again  awaits 
us,  by  some  experience,  exactly  opposite,  in  some 
act  of  utter  trustfulness,  of  thorough  dependence,  by 
some  letting  of  our  life  be  simply  and  solely  the 
life  of  God  in  us.  That  act,  whatever  else  it  is  in  its 
form,  will  be  at  root  an  act  of  faith.  "Justification 
by  faith"  alone.  Our  father's  faithlessness  and  our 
own  faithlessness  lost  us  our  innocence  and  the  life 
of  God  in  us.  Our  faith  must  gain  holiness  for  us 
and  bring  back  the  life  of  God  into  us.  Look  at 
each  one  of  these — Love,  Hope,  Obedience,  Right- 
eousness— for  "the  city  lieth  four-square,"  and  we 
see  that  the  soul  of  each  is  faith.  Jesus  expressly 
tells  the  woman  who  heard  Him  say:  "Her  sins, 
which  are  many,  are  forgiven,  for  she  loved  much" — 
"Thy  faith  hath  saved  thee."  Faith  in  something 
lovable  inspires  love.  Faith  makes  the  lover  leap 
into  the  arms  of  the  beloved,  sure  that  he  will  not  let 
him  perish.  In  all  these  experiences  or  conditions 
of  the  soul,  in  which  we  see  men  passing  from 
death  unto  life,  faith  is  the  heroic  initiative,  the 
resistless  force  within,  which  carries  the  soul  over 
its  own  chosen  territory  of  self-conscious  power, 
and  gives  it  into  the  life  of  God.  Faith  is  the  one 
power  which  compels  an  act  or  an  experience  which 
commits  the  soul  utterly  unto  the  eternal  and  infinite. 
That  woman's  love  saved  her,  because  her  faith  bore 
her  soul  out,  through  it  and  by  it,  beyond  herself. 
This  man's  hope  saves  him,  because  faith,  acting 


88     PATHS    TO    THE    CITY    OF    GOD 

within  it,  attaches  the  heart-cords  of  his  very  being 
to  the  might  and  security  lying  in  calm  grandeur 
out  beyond  his  feverish  hopelessness.  This  young 
man's  obedience  would  have  saved  him,  because,  in  it 
and  by  it,  his  faith  would  have  bound  his  life  unto 
the  eternal.  This  man's  righteousness  saves  him, 
because  his  faith  is  his  absolute  confidence  in  some- 
thing outside,  greater,  stronger,  better  than  he,  and 
that  faith  supplies  his  spirit  with  the  eternal  right- 
eousness whose  name  is  God.  In  all  these  there  is 
the  soul's  outreach  of  her  need.  In  all  these  there 
is  exactly  the  opposite  attitude  and  temper  of  soul 
to  those  of  Adam  in  Eden.  Here  is  no  questioning, 
curious,  arrogant  wanting  to  know  for  one's  self; 
no  persistent,  prying  desire  to  eat  of  the  tree  of  the 
knowledge  of  good  and  evil;  but  here  is  unquestion- 
ing dependence  upon  a  life  higher  and  more  intelli- 
gent than  one's  own  can  be;  here  is  a  cordial 
willingness  to  know  only  that  God  knows,  a  glad 
satisfaction  in  living  the  life  which  God  will  live  in 
the  soul.    Here  is  the  real  eating  of  the  tree  of  life. 

And  you  will  notice,  secondly,  that  though 
fundamentally  the  thing  done  in  each  soul  by  each 
experience  is  the  very  thing  which  is  done  in  all  the 
rest,  nevertheless,  that  it  is  done  by  and  through 
just  such  a  personal  and  distinct  experience  as  was 
needed  by  that  particular  soul  for  its  completeness. 
The  city  of  holiness — let  me  say  it  again — is  the  city 
of  wholeness,  of  health  (holth).  Heaven  means 
symmetry.  Heaven  is  character  as  it  ought  to  be. 
"The  city  lieth  four-square,"     God  saves  men  by 


CITY    LIETH    FOUR-SQUARE     89 

fronting-  their  needs  with  an  open-gated  city.  Each 
must  come  in  on  the  side  which  fronts  his  need.  I 
am  sure  that  our  neglect  of  understanding  this,  and 
of  bringing  our  labors  into  harmony  with  this  truth, 
will  account  for  some  of  the  discouraging  inefficiency 
of  many  of  us,  as  Christian  workers.  You  have 
seen  some  exceedingly  hopeless  man  saved  by  hope 
through  your  aid.  His  new  faith  has  thus  expressed 
itself  and  lifted  him  up  out  of  the  wretchedness  of  his 
unconfessed  despair,  and  out  of  the  sins  which  come 
out  of  it.  The  next  needy  soul  whom  you  saw,  you 
tried  to  help  by  the  same  method,  and  failed 
utterly.  Perhaps  this  latter  needy  one  never  lacked 
hope  so  much  as  simple  obedience.  Yet  you  have 
poured  into  him  the  same  successful  medicines,  with 
the  same  ignorance  which  you  would  have  used  in 
giving-  quinine  to  a  man  with  a  broken  leg.  Attack 
a  man's  weakness  and  reenforce  him  at  his  trembling 
point,  if  you  would  save  him.  Where  he  is  weak, 
grace  must  make  him  strong.  All  vicarious  and 
noble  power  is  made  perfect  at  points  of  weak- 
ness. There,  where  a  man  is  incomplete  and  where 
his  life  runs  low,  is  the  place  in  his  nature  and 
character  where  he  is  losing  his  soul.  There,  over 
the  low  defenses,  come  in  the  floods  of  angry  tempta- 
tion. There,  across  the  poor  little  barriers,  most 
easily  broken,  roll  the  chariots  of  his  enemies. 
Manhood  means  completeness  of  power  in  character. 
,We  must  help  there  then,  with  this  truth  in  view,  if 
at  all.  Find  out  what  it  is  your  needy  friend  has 
not;  point  it  out  to  him;  put  it  into  him.    If  he  wants 


90     PATHS    TO    THE    CITY    OF    GOD 

love  to  rally  the  unorganized  power  of  his  soul  into 
harmonious  movement  and  to  make  him  Godlike, 
do  not  try  to  get  visions  of  hope  into  him.  The  gate 
of  love  is  right  in  front  of  his  need.  Do  not  ask  him 
around  to  the  gate  of  hope,  on  the  other  side  of  the 
city,  because  you  entered  there.  Every  man's  need 
indicates  the  side  of  the  city  which  he  shall  enter,  if 
at  all.  Let  us  tell  men,  everywhere,  who  are  trying 
to  be  saved  as  was  somebody  else,  that  their  salvation 
will  be  like  his,  only  because  God  will  lead  their 
faith  to  express  itself  in  such  a  way  as  to  cure  their 
defects.  Take  the  poor  woman  or  the  rich  young 
man — what  different  things  did  Jesus  seek  to  have 
them  do,  and  yet  they  were  to  be  done  with  the 
same  faith  and  for  the  same  reason.  What  the 
young  man  needed  was  self-sacrificing  obedience  to 
make  him  a  complete  man.  There  was  no  other  way 
to  the  city  of  holiness,  to  him,  but  through  that  side. 
What  the  poor  loveless  heart,  which  dragged  its 
bleeding  story  to  the  stainless  Christ,  needed  was 
love;  and  Christ  opened  this  portal,  whose  shining 
gems  were  matched  in  the  tear  drops  which  fell 
when  her  loving  eyes  looked  up  from  her  own 
impurity  and  rested  upon  His  loveliness.  Let  us 
thank  God  that  the  city  of  God  fronts  the  four 
quarters  of  human  incompleteness  with  its  com- 
pleteness of  grandeur  and  peace. 

But  you  say :  "How  is  my  incompleteness  to  get 
hold  of  this  abstract  completeness  of  which  you 
speak?  How  is  a  faithless  man  to  get  a  trustful 
faith?    How  is  a  loveless  man  to  love?    How  is  a 


CITY    LIETH    FOUR-SQUARE     91 

man  who,  like  the  young  man,  has  been  obedient  to 
negative  morahties  and  who  yet  is  an  essentially 
unobedient  man  to  the  spirit  of  things  to  get 
obedience?  How  is  an  unrighteous  soul  to  become 
righteous?"  The  answer  brings  us  where  all  such 
studies  as  this  ought  to  end,  to  the  Incarnation  and 
to  the  enthroned  Lamb.  Jesus  Christ  is  divine 
salvation  from  incompleteness  to  completeness, 
because  He  is  that  Completeness  of  Love,  of  Hope, 
of  Obedience,  of  Righteousness,  to  which  faith  may 
look  in  any  of  these  experiences,  and,  by  fully  trust- 
ing Him,  the  soul  is  saved.  In  Him  all  the  abstrac- 
tions grow  concrete,  all  impersonal  truth  or  power 
is  personal.  "The  Lamb  is  the  light  of  the  city  of 
God."  Many  are  the  gates — three  gates  on  all  four 
sides — but  just  one  way — Faith!  That  way  is 
running  to  the  completeness  in  Christ,  straight  from 
out  our  incompleteness.  Faith  in  Christ !  "Believe" 
not  in  Me  or  "of  Me"  merely.  "Believe  upon  Mc; 
throw  your  life  upon  my  life !"  He  ever  seems  to 
say.  One  way  to  the  many  gates!  One  salvation 
for  many  differing  sinners!  One  city  four-square, 
through  each  of  whose  portals  bursts  one  music  of 
adoration  unto  the  enthroned  Christ,  and  past  each 
of  whose  gateways  comes  a  light  divine  telling 
earth's  children  that  "the  Lord  God  Almighty  and 
the  Lamb  are  the  light  thereof." 


V 

THE   BETTER  THINGS  OF   CHRIST'S 
BLOOD 

"And  the  blood  of  sprinkling  that  speaketh  better 
things  than  that  of  Abel."    Hebrews  xii.  24. 

LET  us  always  rely  upon  the  proposition  that 
the  Bible  as  the  Book  of  Life  endures  com- 
mandingly  for  us  because  the  souls  of  men 
find  its  ancient  descriptions  of  the  moral  life  true  in 
their  own  modern  experiences.  The  Great  White 
Throne  must  be  a  reality  in  obtaining  the  loyal 
obedience  and  even  love  of  our  humanity  for  the 
government  of  which  it  is  the  symbol. 

This  text  brings  to  us  from  out  of  the  great  past 
two  scenes  which  must  ever  be  comprehended,  each 
with  reference  to  the  other — the  one  dark  and 
frightful  scene  where  sin  began  to  leave  drops  of 
blood  behind  its  guilty  feet;  the  other  the  sad  yet 
glorious  scene  where  by  sin's  Satanic  hand  other 
blood  flows  in  which  are  promises  that  sin  has  been 
conquered.  Not  in  the  whole  Bible,  not  even  in  that 
significant  contrast  which  Paul  makes  between  the 
first  and  second  Adam,  is  there  a  more  impressive 
account  given  of  evil  and  the  goodness  which  shall 
destroy  it.     Never  does  poet  or  seer  make  these 

92 


BETTER    THINGS    IN    CHRIST   93 

more  clear  and  their  utter  antagonism  and  inevitable 
conflict  more  startling  than  when  this  brilliant 
writer  to  the  Hebrews,  his  thought  expressing  itself 
in  Hebrew  forms,  in  this  most  eloquent  passage, 
tells  of  the  advance  of  the  interests  of  the  human 
soul  under  God's  loving  leadership  past  the  thunder 
and  lightning  of  Sinai  unto  the  mountain-throne  of 
Christ  called  Calvary,  He  here  sees  my  soul's  life 
and  yours  borne  graciously  beyond  the  law,  once 
broken  and  condemning  us,  from  which — from 
reproachful  conscience  that  is  its  court — there  is  no 
hope,  to  another  fact  wherefrom  it  looks  into 
Heaven,  and,  resting  its  unwearied  and  unworthy 
eye  upon  God's  stainless  throne,  rejoices  in  deliver- 
ance and  intercession  in  ''the  blood  of  sprinkling 
that  speaketh  better  things  than  that  of  Abel." 
It  is  a  sincere  handling  of  our  most  fearful  problem. 
It  takes  it  in  sight  of,  but  beyond,  an  inadequate  to 
an  adequate  solution. 

It  is  exceedingly  significant  to  the  student  of  the 
dark  fact  of  sin  and  of  man's  efforts  to  escape  it, 
that  in  the  early  hours  of  the  race's  life,  so  soon 
after  wrong-doing  had  closed  the  gates  of  innocence 
on  Adam  and  his  children,  yea,  at  the  very  hour  and 
along  with  the  very  fact  of  the  sacrifice  which  was 
offered  to  God  by  Cain  and  Abel,  that  spirit  of  evil 
bespattered  the  green  earth  with  the  blood  of  him 
whose  sacrifice  was  alone  acceptable  unto  God. 

We  can  understand  what  things  the  blood  of 
Abel  trumpet-tongued  speaks,  only  when  we  recall 
that  far-away  event.     Cain  was  the  eldest  of  the 


94    PATHS    TO    THE    CITY    OF   GOD 

children  of  Adam  and  Eve — the  first  child  which 
came  into  the  world  whose  divinely  involved  tend- 
encies had  been  turned  against  its  citizen  by  his 
own  self-will,  the  first  infant  to  begin  life  with  a  cry 
of  pain  in  a  world  whose  pristine  splendor  was 
beclouded  by  human  sin.  Dismal  as  were  the 
heavens  above  and  the  earth  beneath  this  babe  which 
Eve's  mother-love  pressed  to  her  bosom,  that 
mother-heart  remembered  the  promise  whose  light 
touched  every  cloud,  and  it  was  true  enough  to  seize 
upon  God's  already  announced  deliverance  which 
should  come  to  earth  through  the  seed  of  the  woman 
— the  very  woman  who  had  listened  to  the  serpent 
and  had  sinned.  Never  does  a  moral  problem  move 
out'  of  the  soul.  My  heart  gone  wrong  must  be  the 
ethical  battle-field.  It  is  the  sinner's  agony;  that 
sinner  must  experience  the  saint's  redemption.  As 
she  thought  of  it :  "the  seed  of  the  woman  shall 
bruise  the  serpent's  head,"  she  said :  "I  have  gotten 
a  man  from  Jehovah."  Hope  had  its  shrine  in  that 
first  bud  from  human  life.  Humanity  saw  its  first 
child,  and,  as  in  the  baby-brows  it  dreamed  of  the 
future,  it  put  upon  the  altar  of  its  weakness  the 
strength  of  hope.  So  truly,  it  seems,  did  the  child 
become  at  once  the  tower  of  human  hope  that  when 
the  other  son  was  born  his  name  was  made  Abel, 
that  is  "breath"  or  "fading  away." 

We  follow  them  out  into  the  world,  grappling 
with  its  early  problems  and  dealing  dimly  with  the 
questions  of  the  soul.  Cain  is  a  tiller  of  the  ground. 
Abel  is  the  keeper  of  sheep.     Soon  each  of  them  is 


BETTER    THINGS    IN    CHRIST   95 

concerned  with  a  vaster  question  than  any  of  those 
belonging  to  agriculture  or  animal  husbandry.  They 
gaze  with  curious  wonder  upon  their  universe. 
Religion  has  lit  her  altar-fires.  The  Almighty  God 
is  above  them  and  their  souls  would  have  access 
unto  Him.  The  interior  universe  is  more  interest- 
ing than  all  outside.  How  early  had  the  distance 
between  the  humanity  which  had  lost  its  Eden  and 
the  God  against  whom  it  had  rebelled  become  too 
great  for  their  thought  to  span  it  by  throwing  across 
it  threads  of  simple  praise  or  solemn  prayer !  How 
soon  did  the  living  truth  which  lies  in  all  the  long 
history  of  sacrifice  begin  to  move  dominantly  in  the 
human  soul !  For  Cain  and  Abel  confess  it  and 
embody  it  all  in  their  act  of  offering.  Humanity  is 
here.  The  hearts  of  the  two  brothers  beat  respon- 
sively  to  this  one  great  fact,  and  up  the  same  path 
of  sacrifice  along  which  so  many  of  their  successors 
have  solemnly  walked  and  yet  will  walk,  do  these 
simple  men  go  to  manifest  their  feeling  toward  God. 
Crude  and  childlike  their  acts  appear  to  you,  who 
think  of  all  the  magnificance  of  ritual  in  the  ages 
which  have  rolled  on  between  you  and  them;  still 
theirs  was  a  great  act;  it  was  man's  first  and 
sublime  yearning  toward  God  manifesting  itself 
against  the  background  of  human  loss;  yes,  it  was 
a  yearning  which  was  deep  and  true  enough  to  begin 
the  history  of  sacrifice. 

It  was  a  frank  and  meaningful  event  of  con- 
science and  will  in  the  history  of  the  human  soul 
which  evidenced  its  inherent  relationship  to  some- 


96    PATHS    TO    THE    CITY    OF    GOD 

thing  or  someone  possessing  and  ruling  by  an  ideal 
of  Holiness.  It  was  an  early  look  toward  the  city  of 
those  whose  white  robes  are  made  white  by  blood. 
Man  had  lost  Eden  because  he  would  not  simply  trust 
God  and  eat  of  the  tree  of  life — because  he  would  eat 
of  the  tree  of  knowledge  of  good  and  evil — because 
he  was  not  satisfied  to  move  and  rest  in  the  unques- 
tioned sovereignty  of  God.  And  now,  out  of  Eden, 
was  he  to  escape  that  same  sovereignty  of  God  ?  Was 
God  to  change  his  nature  ?  Could  the  soul — does  my 
soul  or  yours  escape  the  necessity  and  beneficence  of 
government  by  its  proudest  revolt  ?  Never.  Govern- 
ment never  means  so  much  as  after  one  knows  by 
experience  the  difference  between  good  and  evil. 
And  so  Cain's  soul  had  to  meet  the  old  fact  before 
which  his  father  and  mother  had  failed.  He  had  to 
confront  the  same  sovereignty,  which,  if  lovingly 
worshiped,  is  life;  which,  if  opposed,  is  death.  If 
sin  is  only  "missing  the  mark,"  Cain  had  sinned. 
Now,  how  much  sharper  did  its  demand  for  govern- 
ment appear  to  his  soul,  which  was  more  trustless 
than  Adam's  by  the  effect  of  one  experience  more 
of  sin!  "And  the  Lord  had  respect  unto  Abel  and 
to  his  offering,  but  unto  Cain  and  his  offering  he 
had  not  respect."  Why?  Oh,  dear  friends,  that  is 
the  awful  question,  why?  We  may  not  find 
out  all.  Cain  did  not  stop  to  find  out.  Some- 
thing as  a  consequence  made  Cain  more  anarchic. 
Instantly,  however,  we  see  that  there  was  reason 
in  Cain  himself,  why  no  offering  he  might 
make  would  be,  could  be  respectable.    The  offering 


BETTER    THINGS    IN    CHRIST   97 

might  appear  outwardly  all  right;  behind  it  was  a 
man  all  wrong.  He  was  in  no  deep  harmony  with 
the  great  idea  of  sacrifice.  For  when  he  saw  God's 
respect  unto  Abel  and  God's  disrespect  of  him,  he 
was  the  trustless,  self-important,  unsubmitting 
Adam,  ten- fold  more  strong.  ''Gain  was  very  wroth, 
and  his  countenance  fell."  But  even  as  the  sover- 
eignty of  God  was  just  in  Eden  when  Adam 
declined  it  first,  so  is  that  same  sovereignty  of  God 
just  even  when  Cain's  anger  flames  against  it.  Here 
now  is  that  appeal  to  reason  which  my  soul  hears 
when  conscience  is  clouded  over.  God  spake  to 
Cain:  "Why  art  thou  wroth?  And  why  is  thy 
countenance  fallen?  If  thou  doest  well,  shalt  thou 
not  be  accepted  ?"  O  what  a  gleam  from  the  Great 
White  Throne!  "And  if  thou  doest  not  well,  sin 
lieth  at  the  door."  It  is  the  appeal  of  the  eternal 
justice  in  God  to  the  sense  of  justice  in  man,  to  the 
sense  of  justice  in  the  wrathful  Cain.  If  Cain  is  to 
be  saved,  that  sense  of  justice  must  be  emphasized. 
The  story  of  Cain  is  the  story  of  sin.  Just  as  Cain's 
wrath  grew  out  of  that  self-will  which  lay  behind  it, 
ready  and  sure  to  blaze  out  at  such  a  crisis,  so  in  that 
wrath  quivered  the  sword  which  should  be  sharper 
with  a  yet  more  terrible  sin.  He  meets  his  brother 
Abel  in  the  field.  His  anger — which  is  self-will 
afire — this  has  been  his  curse  and  now  it  is  his 
demon,  and  the  murdered  Abel  falls  on  the  newly 
created  earth.  This  world  of  ours  has  seen  its 
first  fratricide,  and  the  first  drops  of  human  blood 
fall  warm  upon  its  shuddering  bosom. 


98    PATHS    TO    THE    CITY    OF    GOD 

Let  us  not  get  away  from  our  own  heart's  ex- 
perience, as  we  go  on  with  Cain.  Thus  it  is  that  the 
sin  and  crime  of  Cain  had  their  terrible  utterance 
in  the  blood  of  righteous  Abel.  And  this  is  the  first 
thing  which  the  blood  of  Abel  speaks  on  that  horror- 
stricken  day  of  fratricide,  to  all  the  long  centuries 
of  human  philosophy,  to  the  immaculate  holiness  of 
heaven — this,  the  atrocious  nature  of  wrong.  We 
never  know  how  wrong  the  Cain  in  us  is  until  the 
Abel  in  us  is  slain.  Whatever  else  these  drops  of 
blood,  staining  the  bosom  of  earth  with  the 
history  of  the  first  murder,  may  speak,  they  were  the 
voice  and  speech  of  that  spirit  of  Cain,  which,  as  I 
have  tried  to  show  you,  had  repeated  the  self-will 
that  would  not  stop  nor  be  warned,  the  self-will 
which  disregarded  another  human  life,  the  self-will 
which  banished  him  at  last  to  a  life  of  flight  and 
wandering  and  unrest,  beginning  the  line  of  those 
who  should  bear  "the  mark  of  Cain." 

How  eloquently  Abel's  blood  told  of  what  lay 
back  behind  the  murderous  hand  of  his  brother! 
How  it  takes  some  such  terrible  flash  of  lightning  as 
that  which  quivered  above  the  pallid  face  of  the  dead 
Abel,  to  tell  what  the  vague,  soft,  and  fleecy  clouds 
of  our  egoism  meant  all  along,  as  they  noiselessly 
gathered  together  in  the  sky  of  the  soul!  Every 
drop  of  blood  which  Abel's  body  left  upon  the  chilly 
earth  was  full  of  Cain's  history.  It  told  of  the 
arrogant  self-will  which  was  behind,  which  pene- 
trated and  ruined  his  offering,  so  that  God  could 
not  respect  it.    It  may  have  told  of  a  contrast  which 


BETTER    THINGS    IN    CHRIST   99 

lay  in  the  fact  that  Abel  had  brought  the  best,  the 
firstlings  of  the  flock  and  the  fat  thereof,  while  Cain 
had  no  such  lofty  conception  of  God  as  would  lead 
him  to  go  beyond  what  was  convenient,  offering,  as 
he  did,  simply  the  fruit  of  the  ground.  But  behind 
all  supposed  differences  of  offering,  Abel's  blood 
spoke  and  speaks  yet  of  the  terrible  result  to  one's 
fellowmen  of  unloving  distrust  of  God  and  inde- 
pendence. Civilization  depends  much  upon  a  just 
conception  of  God's  right  to  be  sovereign.  Many  a 
man  has  said :  "I  see  nothing  in  your  dependence  on 
God  which  shall  make  the  future  of  society  clearer 
or  its  present  more  safe."  Governments  to-day  are 
falling  because  of  the  nihilism  of  the  autocracy, 
orthodox  in  creed  but  untrue  in  spirit,  another  nihil- 
ism of  atheistic  revolt.  Stop  and  see  that  Abel's 
life  was  not  safe  after  Cain  ceased  to  trust  God. 
Just  here  the  idea  of  the  most  ardent  theist,  who 
would  ground  society,  its  aims,  its  movements,  its 
authority,  in  God,  has  its  most  effective  illustration. 
Cain's  godlessness  coiled  in  the  very  hour  when  he 
was  making  an  offering  to  God,  of  something  which, 
by  its  cost,  did  not  emphasize  to  his  own  soul  the 
high  service  in  which  he  was  engaged.  Cain's  god- 
lessness burst  forth  when  he  flew  into  a  rage  at  God's 
not  respecting  his  unworthy  offering,  behind  which 
God  saw  that  there  was  all  this  self-will  which  at 
God's  touch  had  now  confessed  itself  in  anger.  And 
out  of  Cain's  godlessness,  his  declination  of  all 
sovereignty,  his  trustless  independence  of  all  author- 
ity, out  of  his  practically  atheistic  self-will — for  all 


100    PATHS    TO    THE    CITY   OF    GOD 

self-will  is  atheism — came  a  disregard  of  others  and 
of  another's  life;  and  thus  in  Abel's  blood  we  hear 
the  fearful  voice  which  society  heard  in  the  French 
revolution — a  voice  which  society  may  hear  again. 
The  moment  a  man  sets  self-will  against  God's 
sovereignty,  that  moment  his  fellowman  has  no 
safety.  Atheism  always  means  the  destruction  of 
social  organization.  It  has  no  Father-God,  no 
brother-man.  Its  logic  is  the  stroke  of  Cain.  O, 
this  first  thing  which  Abel's  blood  speaks — how 
terrible  is  its  warning!  How  little  did  Cain  dream 
of  being  his  brother  Abel's  murderer,  as  they  to- 
gether had  the  new-born  world  for  the  joy  of  the 
first  human  childhood!  How  little,  as  they  went 
together  to  the  offering,  each  of  his  sacrifice  unto 
God,  did  one  think  that  the  other's  wrath  could  slay ! 
Ah,  neither  did  they  even  know  what  death  meant, 
until  Cain's  heavy  stroke  prostrated  the  righteous 
Abel.  As  Abel's  limbs  gave  way  and  his  breath 
grew  less  strong,  Cain  saw  and  understood.  Arro- 
gance in  your  soul,  when  God  would  have  your  offer- 
ing deeper  and  more  real;  every  haughty  independ- 
ence of  your  nature  when  God  seems  only  to 
disregard  your  heartless  life;  every  churlishness  of 
spirit,  when  God  would  have  you  sincere  and  loyal 
in  your  religion,  means  self-will,  means  a  fallen 
countenance  like  Cain's,  means  anarchy  of  soul,  and 
has  within  itself  the  murderous  assertion  of  self 
which  leaves  Abel  dead,  and  asks,  "Am  I  my 
brother's  keeper  ?"  O,  what  a  fading  away  of  social 
obligation  I    What  an  antagonist  to  the  interdepend- 


BETTER    THINGS    IN    CHRIST   101 

ence   of   society  is   this,   crying   out:   "Am   I   my 
brother's  keeper?" 

But  Abel's  blood  speaks  also  the  next  word  which 
will  always  be  heard  in  a  righteous  universe  when 
high-handed  wrong  slays  the  right.  God  said  to 
Cain:  "What  hast  thou  done?  the  voice  of  thy 
brother's  blood  crieth  unto  Me  from  the  ground." 
"Crieth  unto  Me"?  Again,  the  Great  White 
Throne.  This  is  the  terrible  note  in  its  pathetic 
eloquence  which  reaches  the  ear  of  heaven.  "The 
voice  of  thy  brother's  blood  crieth  unto  Me  from 
the  ground."  Earth  cannot  swallow  up  what  con- 
cerns heaven.  Abel  was  dead,  but  eternal  light  lived 
in  the  throne  of  God.  So  long  as  the  universe 
stands,  it  must  hold  together  in  righteousness.  This 
is  the  idea  emphasized  in  the  word  which  with  singu- 
lar force  is  applied  to  Abel — "righteous  Abel."  In 
Abel's  death,  the  moral  order  of  things  was  contra- 
vened, the  divine  goodness  which  had  framed  the 
world  was  outraged.  "The  power  not  ourselves 
which  makes  for  righteousness,"  as  Mr.  Matthew 
Arnold  preferred  to  speak  of  God,  was  met  with  an 
opposition  sharp  with  murderous  jealousy  and  un- 
holy hate.  Restitution,  reparation,  compensation,  a 
moral  readjustment  of  things — call  it  what  you  will 
— must  come;  justice  must  be  done.  To  preserve  its 
integrity,  the  soul  demands  this.  This  is  the  flash 
of  the  Great  White  Throne  attesting  man's  moral 
relationships.  Who  that  must  respect  the  universal 
government  would  have  it  otherwise?  How  else 
would  moral  values  endure  ?    How  else  would  God 


102    PATHS    TO    THE    CITY    OF    GOD 

get  the  consent  or  assent  of  the  governed?  "The 
voice  of  thy  brother  Abel's  blood  crieth  unto  Me," 
says  God.  It  pierces  the  ten  thousand  songs  of 
angels;  it  crowds  past  the  praises  of  the  saints;  it 
drov^ns  the  melodies  of  the  harpers,  and  it  speaks 
with  resistless  eloquence  from  its  red  blot  on  the 
chilled  star  called  earth  to  my  justice  and  to  my 
eternal  goodness!  It  crieth  unto  Me  from  the 
ground — from  the  ground  which  God  had  given  to 
man  for  divine  achievements.  Abel  had  come  home 
to  heaven — earth  had  sent  her  first  martyr  to  the 
city  of  God;  but  there  on  earth  was  yet  that  blood- 
spot.  In  Cain's  soul  and  society,  in  God's  universe, 
Wrong  had  come.  Justice  must  be  done.  Abel 
"being  dead  yet  speaketh." 

So  long  as  the  soul  will  listen  most  to  its  Shakes- 
peares  and  Dantes,  so  long  will  Abel  speak.  With 
such  fearful  power  does  the  blood  of  Abel  speak 
throughout  all  history,  with  such  a  voice  and  in 
such  startling  tones  does  every  slain  righteousness 
utter  its  burden  of  meaning  to  the  reason  of  earth 
and  holiness  of  heaven.  The  sinfulness  of  sin,  the 
sureness  of  justice — what  an  evidence,  yet  what  a 
disheartening  message  it  is,  coming  from  the  bloody 
earth  in  all  ages,  pouring  itself  forth  in  the  sad  wail 
of  the  deepest  souls,  putting  a  minor  strain  into  all 
the  music  of  humanity  and  darkening  the  future  of 
every  sinful  spirit.  Conscience  echoes  it  and  the 
halls  of  memory  are  crowded  with  its  cries;  and 
the  human  soul,  standing  with  many  a  murdered 
goodness  behind  it,  sure  of  its  sin,  sure  of  God's 


BETTER    THINGS    IN    CHRIST   103 

justice,  asks  and  asks  again :  "How  shall  a  man  be 
just  before  God?"  Our  Shakespeares  and  Dantes 
crowd  us  up  to  that  deepest  inquiry. 

Back  again,  then,  do  we  go  to  the  past.  We 
stand  between  Abel's  blood  and  the  bloody  crest  of 
Calvary.  Sinai  can  only  smoke  and  terrify.  We 
see  the  law  given  amidst  the  rolling  thunder  and  the 
fiery-footed  lightning.  We  listen  to  a  voice  which 
responds  to  the  voice  of  Abel's  blood,  but  it  is  *'too 
terrible  to  be  borne."  We  see  the  imperial  Moses 
fear  and  quake.  But  let  us  not  haste  to  despair. 
Perhaps  some  modern  discovery  as  to  law  and  its 
power  has  changed  our  attitude.  We  will  again 
appeal  to  Law.  Sinai  is  henceforth  our  hope.  It 
is  the  hour  when  Law  speaks  to  the  trembling 
human  soul.  But  alas !  Law  has  no  medicine  for 
her  wounds.  Never  were  we  so  certain  of  that. 
Law  may  only  attempt  to  prevent  sin  by  command. 
Law  cannot  stimulate  righteousness.  Law  only  bids 
man  avoid  evil-doing  and  cannot  lift  him  up  when 
he  has  fallen.  Law  discloses  a  law-giver  with  whom 
the  soul  of  the  sinner  would  commune,  but  it  tells 
him  that  his  sins  prevent  it.  Still  is  the  holiness  of 
heaven  far  away.  Still  does  the  very  grandeur  of 
law  make  man  long  to  be  near.  Near  or  far, 
still  between  man's  soul  and  God's  white  throne 
Abel's  blood  cries  with  eloquence  so  piteous  that  God 
must  hear,  and  justice  must  be  done. 

Stop,  O  my  soul !  do  not  despair !  Hope,  every- 
where is  hope.  Calvary  lifts  its  summit.  It  is 
physically  smaller,  but  morally  loftier,  and  upon  it 


104    PATHS    TO    THE    CITY    OF    GOD 

there  is  the  all-conquering  cross.  Here  is  law,  but 
it  is  love's  law.  Here  is  blood  also,  but  it  is  love's 
outpoured  heart.  Here  is  government  which  by  a 
thousand  tender  and  strong  persuasions  must  at 
length  obtain  the  consent  of  the  governed.  The 
world  has  a  new  history.  Abel's  blood  has  justice 
done.  Just  at  the  point  where  Abel's  murderer  is  to 
be  saved  from  his  sinfulness  and  sin,  God  is  Love 
and  Love  is  salvation  from  sin.  For  "Ye  are  not 
come  unto  the  mount  that  might  be  touched  and  that 
burned  with  fire,  nor  unto  blackness  and  darkness, 
and  tempest,  and  the  sound  of  a  trumpet  and  the 
voice  of  words,  which  voice  they  that  heard  en- 
treated that  the  word  should  not  be  spoken  to  them 
any  more  (for  they  could  not  endure  that  which 
was  commanded,  and  if  so  much  as  a  beast  touch 
the  mountain,  it  shall  be  stoned  or  thrust  through 
with  a  dart,  and  so  terrible  was  the  sight  that  Moses 
said,  I  exceedingly  fear  and  quake !),  but  ye  are  come 
unto  Mount  Sion  and  unto  the  city  of  the  living 
God,  the  heavenly  Jerusalem,  and  to  an  innumerable 
company  of  angels,  to  the  general  assembly  and 
church  of  the  first  born,  which  are  written  in  heaven, 
and  to  God  the  judge  of  all  and  to  the  spirits  of  just 
men  made  perfect,  and  to  Jesus  Christ  the  mediator 
of  the  new  covenant,  and  to  the  blood  of  sprinkling 
that  speaketh  better  things  than  that  of  Abel."  Not 
unto  Eden,  but  unto  "The  New  Jerusalem"  ?  Then 
civilization  is  assured. 

Now,  I  do  not  need  to  assume  that  any  of  us 
have  been  guilty  of  the  death  of  an  Abel,  that  I  may 


BETTER    THINGS    IN    CHRIST   105 

be  able  truly  to  say  that  just  in  proportion  to  our 
nobility  of  mind  and  honesty  of  purpose,  each  of 
us  has  recognized  from  within  our  very  souls  the 
startling  truthfulness  of  this  story.  Sin  has  but 
one  sad  record  to  make  of  itself.  It  always  tells  its 
secret  somehow,  and  that  secret  is  one.  The  very 
heart  of  sin  is  the  trustless,  unsubmitting  self-im- 
portance of  Adam  and  of  Cain.  That  must  express 
itself.  It  may  not  show  itself  at  first,  as  possibly 
Cain's  real  spiritual  self  did  not  show  itself  in  the 
character  of  his  sacrifice,  yet  it  surely  will  show 
itself,  even  as  Cain's  thorough  godlessness  revealed 
itself  in  his  wrath  when  Abel's  sacrifice  was  pre- 
ferred. 

God  sees  behind  our  actions.  That  wrath 
and  that  down-looking  surly  face  of  Cain  then 
told  to  human  eyes  what  God  had  seen  all  the  time — 
the  fact  that  there  was  no  trust,  reverence,  or  love 
in  Cain's  offering.  It  held  no  such  estimate  of  God's 
right  to  worthy  devotion  as  will  alone  keep  a  man 
true  to  the  great  white  throne.  How  every  sinning 
soul  repeats  this  experience  and  the  rest  of  the 
story  of  sin  and  sacrifice,  until  Jesus  comes !  Fallen 
countenances  and  the  blood  of  Abel  crying  from  the 
ground — this  is  sin's  exhibit  and  programme.  How 
many  of  us,  like  Cain,  have  waked  up  to  the  awful 
presence  of  some  sleepless  wrong;  and  like  him  have 
broken  away  from  everything  only  to  become  men- 
tally and  spiritually  wanderers  on  the  earth.  We  are 
anarchists.  But  we  could  not  stay  away  from  the 
wrongs  which  we  have  done.    We  cannot — for  we 


106    PATHS    TO    THE    CITY    OF    GOD 

are  yet  men  with  conscience — the  great  white  throne 
has  a  permanent  reflection  in  the  soul.  No  laby- 
rinthian  paths  are  so  devious  as  to  lose  from  us 
our  sins.  Conscience  and  memory — memory,  the 
living  wall  on  which  the  picture  hangs,  and  con- 
science, the  awful  hand  which  keeps  it  hanging  there 
and  points  our  wandering  eyes  unto  it — O  Cain, 
these  have  not  let  us  rest — ''the  blood  of  thy  brother 
Abel  has  been  crying  unto  Me,"  says  God. 

It  is  the  fate  of  human  progress — all  advancing 
art,  literature,  politics,  life  will  accentuate  the  search- 
ing pathos  in  that  statement.  Who  would  have  it 
otherwise  ?  Our  very  souls  say  it  is  right  that  such 
a  thing  as  the  footprints  of  sin  should  always  tell 
the  horrible  truth.  It  is  right  that  there  should  be 
an  open  ear  to  hear  the  slain  innocencies  and  the 
killed  purities  of  the  world  which  cry  from  the 
ground.  God  would  not  be  God,  if  right  and  wrong 
did  not  appear  differently  in  His  holy  eyes.  Our 
consciences  say,  while  our  sins  are  the  most  heavy, 
"Cry  out!  every  drop  of  Abel's  blood  make  thine 
appeal!  there  must  be  justice  in  the  universe;  and 
ultimately  justice  must  hear  the  cry  from  the  cold 
ground."  More  than  this  of  the  Old  Testament 
story  must  my  soul  and  yours  repeat  in  its  own 
experience.  Law  begins  to  assert  its  majesty  and 
commands.  Just  as  soon  as  I  have  done  wrong 
and  my  conscience  reveals  some  crying  innocence 
which  I  have  slain  in  my  soul  or  some  bleeding 
goodness  which  is  killed  and  whose  blood  yet  speaks, 
just  so  soon  a  Sinai  full  of  threatenings,  "the  mount 


BETTER    THINGS    IN    CHRIST   107 

that  might  not  be  touched,"  rises  up  in  my  soul. 
You  and  I  would  not  have  it  otherwise.  It  is  a 
universe  of  law.  It  cannot  help  me  to  do  right,  but 
it  does  command  me  not  to  do  wrong.  Yet  I  have 
already  done  wrong.  What  then?  It  will  blaze 
with  terror  and  thunder  with  righteous  wrath  at  my 
wrong-doing — "the  blood  of  Abel  crieth  from  the 
ground."  The  sword  of  justice  leaps  from  the 
scabbard  of  darkness  above  me — and  yet  conscience 
and  honor  say,  "It  is  right."  This  Bible  is  the  book 
of  life.  The  Old  Testament  story  of  what  humanity 
knew  is  the  story  of  what  every  soul  knows.  And 
then  the  sacrifices,  how  we  bring  them  to  the  altar 
of  God !  There  is  nothing  in  all  the  story  of  man's 
life  which  so  interests  us,  and  as  Coleridge  says, 
"finds"  us,  and  agrees  with  our  best  feelings,  as  the 
long  story  of  the  sacrifices  which  man  has  made  on 
account  of  sins.  Mythology  has  had  her  pages 
turned  again  and  again  to  relate  to  moistened  eyes 
the  deep,  sincere  movement  of  the  human  spirit  in 
past  ages,  as  in  various  forms  it  has  felt  and  testified 
in  the  sacrifices  that  somehow  even  Abel's  blood  has 
a  righteous  voice  and  that  its  cry  for  retribution  must 
be  met.  I  would  not  sympathize  with  the  asser- 
tion that  there  is  too  much  about  blood  in  the  Bible 
— especially  in  the  story  of  the  cross  and  in  the 
vision  of  those  whose  robes  were  made  white  like  the 
Great  White  Throne — why?  Because  I  would  have 
the  facts  of  redemption  adequate  to  meet  the  facts 
of  sin.  As  goodness  seems  to  grow  more  desirable 
to  the  race,  its  horror  of  sin  must  grow  more  awful. 


108    PATHS    TO    THE    CITY    OF    GOD 

The  bloody  altars  of  the  Israelites  have  been  the 
spots  in  the  lands  of  this  life  of  ours  whereto  honest 
minds  have  come,  and  in  spite  of  man's  misappre- 
hensions of  God,  man  has  confessed  that  at  these 
very  scenes  where  justice  seemed  often  implacable, 
human  nature  has  stood  in  the  presence  of  the 
deepest  realities  of  earth  and  sky.  At  last  there 
comes  to  the  soul,  as  it  came  to  Israel — a  momentous 
truth — the  truth  that  this  very  Cain  is  yet  God's 
child,  in  spite  of  his  sins.  He  is  God's  wicked, 
rebellious  child;  that  God's  Great  White  Throne 
must  be  enough  of  a  throne,  it  must  be  great  enough, 
it  must  be  zvhite  enough,  to  save  him;  that  God 
needs  not  to  be  placated,  but  this  Cain  and  his 
descendants  cannot  sacrifice  richly  enough  in  all 
time  to  meet  the  broken  law;  that  God  must — yea, 
does  desire,  not  sacrifices,  but  rather  a  broken  heart 
to  begin  on,  to  repair  the  breach  and  reinstate  com- 
munion of  God  and  man. 

Now,  how  shall  this  be  accomplished  ?  No  com- 
munion with  God  can  be  had  until  man  has  God's 
holy  sense  of  sin.  Abel's  blood  must  cry  from  the 
ground.  No  communion  can  be  had,  until  man  is 
reconciled  unto  God — ^not  God  reconciled  unto  man, 
the  sinner.  Man  must  be  changed.  And  the  very 
thing  which  changes  man,  which  melts  and  trans- 
forms Cain,  must  be  the  shrine  where  God's  just  law 
which  Cain  has  broken  is  honored,  where  the  wrong 
of  every  sin  against  it  is  exemplified  and  brought  out 
into  such  prominence  that  the  soul  sees  it  and  hates  it 
too;  and  it  must  be  something  also  which  shall  put  a 


BETTER    THINGS    IN    CHRIST   109 

new  life  of  obedience  in  the  disobedient  soul  before 
even  the  free  grace  of  God,  who  is  all  love,  can  for- 
give it  its  iniquities  and  call  it  just.  All  these  are  in 
the  cross  of  Jesus  Christ,  so  that  God  does  forgive 
sin  in  the  cross  of  Christ,  The  moment  this  wander- 
ing Cain  sees  God's  sacrifice  for  our  sins,  the  blood  of 
Abel  does  not  cry  less  for  vengeance;  but  the  blood 
of  Christ  sprinkles  the  altar  of  conscience,  and 
"speaketh  better  things  than  that  of  Abel."  Strange, 
but  how  divinely  suggestive  is  it  that  the  same 
murderous  spirit  which  is  in  all  evil,  the  same  temper 
which  makes  all  sin  so  intent  on  killing  out  all 
goodness,  should  run  on  from  the  days  of  Cain's 
jealous  hate,  getting  more  and  more  fierce,  until  at 
last  goodness  in  its  highest  form — God  Himself  in 
Christ — should  be  attacked  in  the  very  moment  of 
His  deepest  manifestation  of  Himself.  That  was  the 
hour  when  sin  showed  its  sinfulness.  Any  man  who 
accepts  the  cross — the  blood  of  Christ — accepts 
that  estimate  of  the  fearful  malice,  the  just  punish- 
ableness  of  sin. 

But  that  was  the  very  moment  when  love,  as  it 
seemed  to  die,  killed  sin.  Sin  loses  its  charm, 
ruins  its  influence  at  the  cross.  It  reeled  from  the 
cross  of  Jesus,  as  the  blood  of  a  new  sacrifice  fell 
upon  the  same  cold  earth,  "the  blood  that  speaketh 
better  things  than  that  of  Abel" — ^the  blood  that, 
unlike  his,  crying  for  justice,  told  of  God's  just  hate 
of  sin,  told  of  what  it  always  must  cost — blood  that 
told  also  of  God's  mercy  to  the  sinner. 

"The  blood  of  sprinkling"  the  apostle  calls  it. 


110    PATHS    TO    THE    CITY    OF    GOD 

Conscience  and  God  are  one  in  this  great  truth  of  the 
atonement.  And  your  better  self  will  never  be 
peaceful,  your  conscience  will  never  be  still  with  an 
atonement  for  sin  which  does  not  reconcile  you  to 
God's  just  indignation  at  sin.  You  must  be  par- 
doned, if  at  all,  by  confessing  the  cross,  which  is,  in 
that  sense,  the  propitiation,  the  expiatory  sacrifice. 
God  can  forgive  only  at  the  point  where  His  holy 
law  is  perfectly  obeyed  at  an  awful  cost,  on  account 
of  the  sin  of  the  world.  Do  not  say  that  the  atone- 
ment in  Christ  simply  has  its  effect  on  you  and  that 
Christ's  death  has  no  effect  on  God.  It  certainly 
has  its  effect  upon  you,  if  you  accept  it,  to  emphasize 
the  righteousness  of  God's  law,  to  satisfy  a  sleepless 
justice  to  which  the  blood  of  Abel  cries,  to  show 
always  that  divine  goodness  must  be  our  substitute 
in  God's  perpetual  sacrifice  for  our  evil.  And  partly 
because  you  accept  the  cross  as  this,  God  says: 
"Peace !  it  is  all  right." 

But  do  not  say  that  the  atonement  simply  has 
its  effect  on  God.  It  must  change  you.  ''The  blood 
that  speaketh  better  things  than  that  of  Abel"  must 
break  your  heart,  it  must  attach  you  to  the  Great 
White  Throne  in  tearful  love.  It  must  put  this  very 
law,  against  which,  as  an  eternal  command,  you  did 
sin,  into  your  breast,  into  your  heart.  You  must  fall 
in  love  with  Christ,  His  life.  His  spirit,  His  will. 
His  love  for  you  must  be  a  law  of  love  in  you  toward 
Him,  "The  Love  of  Christ  constraineth  us."  This 
love  in  you  is  the  promise  and  pledge  that  you  will 
be  holy;.    It  assures  your  obedience  hereafter  to  the 


BETTER    THINGS    IN    CHRIST    111 

every  law  which  you  have  broken  before.    It  recon- 
ciles you  to  God.    His  life  in  you  is  your  life. 

O,  thou  unquiet  conscience !  hearing  only  Abel's 
blood  crying  from  the  chilled  earth,  hearing  only  the 
sad  story  of  the  killed  good  which  you  have  slain, 
hearing  only  this  terrible  appeal  to  justice,  I  beg  of 
you  to-day,  listen  to  sweeter  sounds,  yes,  hear  the 
blood  of  sprinkling  speak  the  "better  things"  of  a 
holy  hate  of  sin,  a  sacrificing  love  of  God  for 
sin,  a  gracious  salvation  from  sin,  reconciliation  unto 
God,  pardon — hear  "the  blood  that  speaketh  better 
things  than  that  of  Abel." 


VI 
LESSONS   FROM   THE    RAINBOW 

(Sermon  preached  after  a  summer  storm) 

"  I  have  set  My  bow  in  the  cloud,  and  it  shall  be  for  a 
token  of  a  covenant  between  Me  and  the  earth  ;  and  it  shall 
come  to  Dass,  when  I  bring  a  cloud  over  the  earth,  that  the 
bow  shall  be  seen  in  the  cloud."     Genesis  ix.  13. 

"As  the  appearance  of  the  bow  in  the  cloud  in  the  day 
of  rain,  so  was  the  appearance  of  the  brightness  round 
about."     Esekiel  i.  28. 

"  And  there  was  a  rainbow  round  about  the  throne," 
Revelation  iv.  3. 

PERHAPS  there  are  no  books  in  all  the  world's 
literature,  which  have  so  constantly  been  the 
victims  of  that  slavish  and  mole-eyed  literal- 
ism of  interpretation,  which  is  the  saddest  fate  which 
may  befall  any  really  great  message  of  God,  as  have 
the  books  of  Genesis,  Ezekiel,  and  Revelations. 
"The  letter  killeth,"  as  Jesus  said;  and  that  stiff 
dogmatism  whose  product  is  a  prosaic  literalism 
becomes  the  breastwork  for  an  ignorance  which 
neither  learns  anything  nor  forgets  anything.  One 
of  the  outcomes  of  this  literalism,  which  has  insisted 
upon  its  prosaic  interpretations  of  the  poetic  words 
of  Genesis,  is  the  current  notion  that  the  writer  of 
the  book  was  ignorant  of  the  nature  and  constitution 
of  the  rainbow;  and  it  avers  that  this  is  the  accurate 
account  which  he  would  leave  us  of  its  first  being  set 

112 


LESSONS    FROM    THE    RAINBOW  113 

in  the  sky.  It  is  useless  to  say  that  no  one  who  has 
sympathy  with  the  deeper  meanings  of  Genesis  ever 
obtained  such  an  impression  from  the  reading  of 
the  chapter;  and  nobody  needs  to  be  told  again  that 
this  popular  misconception  had  its  birth  in  that 
method  of  Scripture  interpretation  which  persist- 
ently misapprehends  the  story  of  the  creation,  con- 
stantly asserts  that  there  is  a  conflict  between  Genesis 
and  geology,  and  feels  that  this  conflict  is  only  a 
single  battle  in  the  long  and  hopeless  war  between 
religion  and  science.  In  a  much  more  revealing 
light  than  that  of  yesterday,  the  thinkers  of  to-day 
are  finding  a  devout  and  inspiring  use  for  every 
word  of  the  ancient  story.  Genesis  and  geology  are 
taken  to  be  two  differently  written  accounts  of  the 
same  event  and  its  operating  energies;  and  we  are 
able  to  detect  such  spiritual  meanings  in  the  rainbow 
which  Noah  saw  in  the  morning  of  the  world's  story 
as  help  us  to  apprehend  the  meanings  of  the  rainbow 
which  Ezekiel  saw  and  of  that  which  John  saw  in 
the  morning  of  Heaven  round  about  the  throne  of 
God. 

Truths  reach  over  infinite  distances,  and  bind 
together  men  and  events  which  appear  widely  sepa- 
rated. Noah  and  John  were  thousands  of  years  from 
one  another;  one  looked  from  this  side  the  star's 
paths  at  a  rainbow,  the  other  looked  beyond  them  at 
another  rainbow ;  one  looked  through  our  old  heavens 
and  from  our  old  earth  with  its  sin,  the  other  through 
the  new  heavens  and  from  "the  new  earth,  wherein 
dwelleth  righteousness."    Yet  I  am  sure  that  if  we 


114    PATHS    TO    THE    CITY    OF    GOD 

find  the  spiritual  truth  inside  the  one  rainbow,  the 
other  shall  not  be  out  of  our  sight. 

The  words  of  Genesis  furnish  the  story  of  man's 
discovery  of  the  great  truth  which  he  saw  clearly  as 
it  hung  tremulously  in  the  visible  fact  which  we  have 
called  a  rainbow.  I  do  not  know  that  the  author  of 
Genesis  understood  the  refraction  of  the  sun's  rays 
or  prismatic  colors,  but  one  thing  he  did  find,  and 
that  was  the  spiritual  significance  of  what  was  but 
a  gorgeous  physical  fact;  and  in  the  same  poetic 
manner  in  which  he  has  told  us  the  story  of  Creation, 
he  gives  this  account  of  the  waking  up  of  man's 
mind  to  the  ideal  light  which  was  refracted  into 
spiritual  significance,  through  something  which  was 
before  only  a  brilliant  spectacle.  It  is  a  deep  moment 
in  the  soul's  life  when  we  see  through  things  to  the 
reality  behind  them.  Such  an  hour  came  to  Noah. 
From  that  hour  on,  the  rainbow  was  the  embodiment 
of  a  thought;  its  arch  was  the  splendid  curve  of  a 
Divine  purpose;  its  beauty  was  borrowed  from  the 
message  which  it  carried;  it  was  the  impressive 
picture  of  an  hitherto  unrealized  truth;  it  was  the 
setting  forth  in  the  lingering  language  of  the  storm, 
of  an  invisible  truth,  sublime  and  beautiful  in  storm- 
less  calm. 

To  Noah  it  meant  Divine  Faithfulness.  It  was 
the  visible  pledge  of  this  invisible  fact — and  so  was 
the  rainbow  of  this  morning  to  every  teachable  soul. 
Not  that  other  phenomena  of  nature  do  not  teach  it 
also.  For  every  voice  and  gesture  of  nature  tells  of 
the  Divine  Faithfulness,  albeit  some  voices  we  do 


LESSONS    FROM    THE    RAINBOW  115 

not  hear;  some  gestures  we  do  not  see.  Certainly 
the  morning  sun  with  a  music  full  of  golden  chimes 
proclaims  the  fact  that  the  Supreme  power  has  kept 
His  word  while  we  slept,  and  it  floods  the  world 
with  a  radiance  of  Supreme  Faithfulness.  Every 
time,  in  any  domain  of  the  universe,  a  force  running 
along  the  path  of  law  meets  another  force,  there  is 
told  the  truth  of  the  Faithful  God.  We  are  always 
more  likely  to  feel  this  truth  when  the  sun  is  pouring 
his  ocean  of  light  upon  us  than  when  midnight  is 
over  us,  and  the  clouds  chase  each  other  across  the 
sky,  and  the  thunder  travels  its  solemn  way  crossed 
with  sharp  lightnings.  But  the  riven  oak  by  our 
side  has  been  split  and  is  smoking,  and  God  has 
kept  His  word  with  the  universe  in  natural  law;  and 
the  torrent  which  dashed  into  our  faces  and  be- 
wildered us  with  its  fury  was,  every  drop  of  it,  a 
testimony  that  He  was  faithful  to  what  touched  the 
horizons  and  ran  through  our  brain  and  heart — His 
universal  law.  "No  anarchy  yet!"  says  the  sky 
above.  "No  law  repealed,  and  order  is  supreme!" 
says  the  trembling  earth  beneath  us.  "I  do  set 
My  bow  in  the  cloud,  and  it  shall  be  for  a  token  of  a 
covenant  between  Me  and  the  earth." 

Nature  everywhere  bears  the  touch  of  God.  The 
vast  universe  is  a  collection  of  tokens;  the  whole 
system  of  worlds  is  a  revelation  of  Divine  cove- 
nants which  the  invisible  God  desires  to  publish. 
There  are  hours  when  Noah  feels  this  and  sings : 

"  O  earth!  thou  hast  not  any  wind  which  blows, 
That  is  not  music;  every  reed  of  thine 


116    PATHS    TO   THE    CITY    OF    GOD 

Pressed  rightly,  flows  with  aromatic  wine, 

And  every  humble  hedge-row  flower  that  grows,] 

And  ever3'-  little  brown  bird  that  doth  sing, 

Hath  something  greater  than  itself,  and  bears 

A  living  word  to  every  living  thing; 

Albeit,  it  holds  its  message  unawares. 

All  shapes  and  sounds  have  something  which 

Is  not  of  them;  a  spirit  broods  amidst  the  grass; 

Vague  outlines  of  the  everlasting  thought 

Lie  in  the  melting  shadows  as  they  pass; 

The  touch  of  an  Eternal  Presence  thrills 

The  fringes  of  the  sunsets  and  the  hills. 

Sometimes  (we  know  not  how,  nor  why,  nor  whence) 

The  twitter  of  the  swallow  'neath  the  eaves, 

The  shimmer  of  the  light  among  the  leaves, 

Will  strike  up  through  the  thick  roots  of  our  sense 

And  show  us  things  which  seers  and  sages  saw 

In  the  green  earth's  gray  dawn;  something  doth  stir 

Like  organ-rhymes  within  us  and  doth  awe 

Our  pulses  into  listening,  and  confer 

Burdens  of  being  on  us;  and  we  ache 

With  weights  of  revelations;  and  our  ears 

Hear  voices  from  the  Infinite  that  take 

The  hushed  soul  captive." 

Then  it  is  that  nature  seems  unsubstantial  and 
the  truth  and  covenant  of  which  she  is  the  token 
alone  appear  real.  What,  for  example,  could  be 
more  ethereal  and  unreal  than  this  floating  rainbow  ? 
You  might  not  touch  it,  yet  the  firm  realizable  truth 
behind  it  is  the  fact  of  a  God  who  is  in  covenant  with 
His  child,  humanity.  That  fact  is  the  reaHty  behind 
the  phenomena  of  the  universe,  and  is  as  solid  and 
stable  as  the  throne. 

Nature  is  the  token  of  a  covenant-keeping  God. 
This  is  the  conception  of  nature  to  which  our 
modern  science,  like  a  new  Noah  after  a  deluge  of 


LESSONS    FROM    THE    RAINBOW  117 

chaotic  beliefs  and  unbeliefs,  has  brought  our 
Christian  thought.  It  makes  for  what  is  rightly 
called  the  "essential  piety  of  modern  science,"  that 
one  of  its  great  ideas  is  that  the  Supreme  Force  is 
not  arbitrary  or  whimsical;  that  there  are  ends 
which  nature  and  life  are  set  to  serve;  that  there 
are  countless  promises  strewn  up  and  down  Creation 
and  in  the  dreams  of  man;  that  a  certain  goal  is  to 
be  reached  by  this  craft  on  which  we  are  sailing;  that 
this  covenant,  pledging  the  triumph  of  goodness  in 
man,  lay  like  a  great  plan  beneath  all  the  architecture 
of  the  universe;  and  that  the  Almighty  One  is  the 
All-Faithful  One,  that  God  will  forever  keep  His 
word.  A  great  portion  of  our  religiousness  has 
hardly  got  up  to  that  pious  trust  in  a  God  who  honors 
His  laws,  by  keeping  His  word.  If  we  really  be- 
lieved that  God  would  keep  His  word,  we  should 
sensibly  learn  God's  moral  laws  for  body  and  soul, 
and  we  would  honor  these,  His  expressed  will.  A 
very  lawless,  unreliable,  and  whimsical  God  occupies 
our  thought  oftentimes.  There  is  a  robust  piety 
under  the  idea  of  the  inviolability  of  nature's  laws — 
that  all  miracle  is  God  working  by  law.  Before  the 
God  of  law — strict,  sure,  holy,  natural  law — stood 
Noah,  until  over  his  mind  crept  the  truth  that  this 
God  of  law,  this  God  who  kept  His  word  in  the 
rainbow,  was  a  God  who  had,  behind  all  His  rain- 
bows, storms  and  suns,  a  great  plan,  a  covenant  in 
His  love  with  man  and  the  earth.  Forthwith  the 
rainbow  became  "the  token  of  God's  covenant." 
"O  for  Noah's  point  of  view,"  you  cry;  and  you 


118    PATHS    TO    THE    CITY    OF    GOD 

say,  "The  old  poetic  days  are  gone.  Would  that 
the  world  were  young  again !  Would  that  we  could 
see  truths  like  these  in  such  fair  setting."  Brother 
and  friend,  let  us  get  this  one  truth  first.  Are  we  up 
to  Noah?  Did  the  rainbow  of  to-day  mean  that 
God  will  not  break  His  word  to  you?  Is  it  the 
glorious  statement  written  on  the  sky  of  the  universe 
that  its  God  and  your  God  is  the  Eternal  Faith- 
fulness ? 

We  must  number  Noah  along  with  the  Pascals, 
the  Kants,  and  Leibnitzes — men  who  have  seen  into 
truths  which  underlie  all  true  science  and  true 
religion.  He  saw  in  the  rainbow  that  the  Supreme 
power  did  not  break  His  pledge.  The  scientist  of 
to-day  calls  it  the  irreversible  law  of  nature  that 
hangs  rainbow  after  rainbow  in  the  sky.  Noah  went 
behind  that  thought,  and  felt  that,  whatever  else, 
the  bow  meant  that  God  was  true  and  faithful.  It 
was  the  statement  which  nature  printed  in  a  sublime 
poster  of  seven  colors  that  the  power  behind  her 
could  be  trusted.  And  to-day  science  moves  on  with 
complete  faith  that  law  is  universal,  irreversible, 
constant.  All  human  progress  goes  from  achieve- 
ment to  achievement  in  the  faith  that  the  laws  of 
nature  are  the  habits  of  God;  they  are  not  divine 
whims,  but  realities  upon  which  men  may  rely,  and 
that  our  human  plans  for  the  future  and  present  may 
at  least  bank  upon  the  Supreme  Power's  faithfulness. 
Invention  would  stop  stone-still  if  God  did  not  keep 
His  word.  Suppose  to-morrow  morning  water 
should  run  uphill  instead  of  down,  and  every  other 


LESSONS    FROM    THE    RAINBOW  119 

habit  of  the  informing  force  of  the  universe  be 
cast  aside  for  a  new  one !  Man  would  feel  that  he 
lived  in  a  universe  wherein  it  could  be  of  no  use  to 
search  after  laws  of  nature  and  life,  for  they  might 
be  changed  at  any  time.  It  would  shrivel  the  brain 
of  man  into  a  cell  of  ignorance,  it  would  tear  the 
heart  out  of  the  breast  of  science,  and  would  make  a 
discoverer's  eyes  sightless. 

The  moment  we  realize  that  God  is  honest,  that 
He  means  what  He  intimates  and  hence  that  His 
laws  are  holy  in  His  sight,  so  holy  that  He  will  not 
break  His  pledges,  we  have  a  platform  for  science, 
for  civilization,  for  the  religious  life.  Some  things 
at  least  are  certain — God  and  God's  methods;  these 
laws  are  habits  which  He  will  not  change.  These  are 
capital  for  the  hand,  the  mind,  and  the  heart.  If 
man  knows  that  he  can  count  on  these  ways  of  the 
Infinite,  there  is  the  beginning  of  a  philosophy  of 
the  mysterious  world.  His  noblest,  dearest  task  is 
to  find  out  what  these  Divine  methods  are.  They 
are  also  the  beginning  of  a  civilization,  the  highest 
mark  of  which  is  that  man  shall  be  in  harmony  with 
these  laws  of  God.  They  are,  also,  the  very  founda- 
tions of  religion — man's  finest  wisdom  and  de- 
voutest  sentiment  being  to  trust  this  Faithful  God. 
"Every  law,"  says  the  trembling  rainbow,  "will  hold 
up.  There  is  no  crack  in  the  bridge  over  which 
Omnipotence  travels.  And  these  laws  with  the 
Force  Supreme  are  all  the  massive  reserve  which 
each  man  who  is  true  to  them  has  behind  him." 
After  the  old  society  had  failed  and  the  flood  had 


120    PATHS    TO    THE    CITY    OF    GOD 

swept  away  its  ruins,  God  had  the  beginning  of  a 
new  civiHzation  in  this  survivor,  Noah,  who  saw  in 
the  bow  after  the  storm,  that  God  was  a  covenant- 
keeping  God. 

Doubtless  there  were  at  least  two  other  meanings 
which  crept  into  Noah's  soul.  This  book  of  Genesis, 
like  the  book  of  Revelations,  is  a  most  poetic  book; 
and  it  is  only  by  the  most  fearless  reverence  for  its 
essential  spirit  that  we  escape  the  dangers  of  liter- 
alism and  are  able  to  state  approximately  in  our 
prose  the  truths  which  it  so  beautifully  enshrines. 
But  let  us  reverently  try.  The  flood  must  have  been 
a  very  bewildering  phenomenon  even  to  the  faithful 
and  obedient  Noah.  As  line  after  line  of  solid  land 
appeared  from  beneath  the  desolate  and  world-wide 
sea  which  had  covered  it  so  long,  Noah  must  have 
found  his  heart  beating  with  the  march  of  the 
thoughts  which  possessed  his  obedient  soul.  What 
did  this  awful  phenomenon  mean?  What  kind  of 
universe  could  it  be  in  which  such  a  wondrous  fact 
as  this  could  occur?  What  were  the  comprehensive 
meanings  of  its  Creator  in  which  such  a  stupendous 
event  as  this  could  be  included  ?  What  ideas  of  the 
universe,  what  conceptions  of  the  world's  aim  and 
hope  could  be  said  to  remain  undrowned  in  the 
terrible  depth  of  this  now  retreating  sea?  Some- 
how, Noah  must  have  dealt  with  these  questions  as 
he  saw  again  the  old  earth  and  felt  that  it  was  still 
the  theater  of  man's  life. 

His  eye  had  been  used  to  storms;  his  mind  had 
grown  accustomed  to  the  tumult  and  chaos  of  an 


LESSONS    FROM    THE    RAINBOW  121 

overwhelmed  world  beneath  him  and  the  darkness 
of  heavy  skies  overhead.  But  when  that  morning 
came,  there  arose  in  solemn  grandeur,  out  of  the 
very  waters,  something  so  unaffrighted,  so  peaceful, 
so  grandly  calm.  This  rainbow  appeared.  It  was  an 
arch  whose  massive  lines  of  red,  orange,  yellow, 
green,  blue,  indigo,  and  violet  had  their  foundation 
in  that  invisible  but  real  Somewhere  of  God  which 
lay  beyond  the  range  of  Noah's  penetrating  eye  and 
beneath  the  unfathomed  sea.  It  stood  there,  un- 
swayed by  the  hurrying  clouds  which  had  roamed 
through  the  sky  for  weary  days  and  nights.  The 
black  fortresses  of  the  long,  long  storm  were  broken 
and  scattered  about  the  peaceful  firmament.  The  war 
of  elements  was  over;  there  was  the  arch  of  triumph; 
there  floated  the  seven-colored  banner  of  victory. 
Noah  looked  upon  it  as  he  never  looked  upon  a 
rainbow  before.  He  never  really  saw  a  rainbow 
before.  The  deluge  and  its  experiences  had  put  a 
new  power  of  sight  into  his  eyes.  Every  tint  was  a 
consummate  orator  speaking  "Peace!"  Every  re- 
treating splendor  which  made  way  for  a  deeper 
glory  said,  "Peace !"  In  the  lingering  drops  of  rain 
which  hung  upon  the  stormy  air,  to  be  penetrated 
again  and  again  by  the  darts  of  the  sun,  gleamed 
"Peace!"  In  the  seven-fold  chord  wherein  "the 
colors  coalesced,"  he  saw  a  garment  of  peace  which 
was  woven  in  the  heavens  for  the  glorification  of 
the  earth. 

Now,  the  perception  of  this  interior  fact  within 
that  rainbow  may  have  been  very  incomplete  and 


122    PATHS    TO    THE    CITY    OF    GOD 

vague  on  Noah's  part,  but  it  was  clear  enough  to 
lead  him  to  see  that  other  secret  of  the  Divine  order 
which  lies  at  the  basis  of  all  true  science — philoso- 
phy and  religion — Peace  after  stomi — first  the 
deluge,  then  the  rainbow.  "That,"  thought  Noah, 
"is  the  Divine  order."  And  as  Noah  got  hold  of  that 
revelation  of  God's  method  in  the  universe,  the 
Eternal  One  spoke,  perhaps  just  as  He  speaks  to 
you  and  me  when  we  are  in  the  presence  of  great 
truths,  and  He  said :  "When  I  bring  a  cloud  over 
the  earth :  the  bow  shall  be  on  the  cloud  and  I  will 
look  on  it,  that  I  may  remember  the  everlast- 
ing covenant  between  God  and  every  living 
creature." 

There  could  have  been  no  truer  or  more  eloquent 
token  of  what  was  in  the  mind  of  God  from  the 
beginning  of  man's  life  on  earth  than  that  rainbow. 
Man  was  God's  child,  endowed  with  the  awful  attri- 
bute of  freedom.  In  the  exercise  of  this  freedom 
man  had  sinned;  and  his  Eden  of  innocence  was  a 
thing  of  the  past,  to  which  he  never  could  return. 
But  even  after  he  had  violated  the  order  of  God 
and  expelled  himself  from  his  Eden  of  innocence, 
man  was  still  God's  child — His  erring,  sinning  child. 
Forthwith  there  came  out  of  the  love  of  God,  over 
the  wreck,  a  promise — a  covenant  was  given  from 
Heaven.  God  said:  "And  I  will  put  enmity  be- 
tween thee  and  the  woman,  and  between  thy 
seed  and  her  seed.  It  shall  bruise  thy  head,  and 
thou  shalt  bruise  his  heel."  That  was  a  gleam  of  the 
"rainbow  round  about  the  throne"  which  John  saw 


LESSONS    FROM    THE    RAINBOW  123 

as  his  soul  looked  into  Heaven.  Well!  stormy 
indeed  were  the  skies,  but  the  sun  never  left  the 
heavens.  The  clouds  of  earth-born  sin  hid  the  light 
of  day.  Darker  and  deeper  grew  the  problem  until 
the  deluge  came,  and  the  world  began  with  a  new 
start,  but  with  the  same  old  humanity.  Noah's 
spiritual  eyes,  however,  had  been  opened,  and  when 
that  rainbow  came  out  and  sprang  like  a  glorious 
specter  across  the  skies,  the  brilliant  child  of  sun 
and  storm,  he  caught  a  vision  of  its  meaning;  he 
saw  the  spiritual  facts  which  it  embodied.  Here  was 
a  peace-token  after  the  war  of  elements.  God's  old 
covenant  came  to  mind.  The  old  covenant  suggested 
times  of  storm :  "The  seed  of  the  woman  shall  bruise 
the  serpent's  head."  "It  shall  bruise  thy  head,"  said 
the  Lord,  "and  thou  shalt  bruise  his  heel."  Peace 
was  at  last  come  as  this  rainbow  came,  the  child  of 
sun  and  storm.  At  last,  however,  the  victory  was 
sure  to  come,  as  at  last  this  token  of  peace  had  come 
over  a  retreating  sea.  So  the  rainbow  was  to  Noah 
a  token  of  the  covenant,  the  utterance  of  a  God  who 
had  much  to  say,  and  then  had  intentions  and  pur- 
poses for  this  world  and  its  inhabitants  which  were 
not  to  be  broken.  Here  was  the  manifesto  of  a  Ruler 
who  had  engagements  wrapped  up  in  the  earth  and 
man  which  were  to  be  sacredly  kept. 

Peace  after  tumult,  a  cosmos  after  chaos  as  at 
the  beginning;  the  rainbow  after  the  deluge — the 
order  in  which  they  came  meant  everything  to 
Noah's  mind.  "First  the  deluge !  then  the  rainbow !" 
— that  was  the  opening  of  the  secret.    The  order  of 


124    PATHS    TO    THE    CITY    OF    GOD 

the  events  indicated  the  direction  of  these  Divine 
aims  and  intentions  with  which  the  physical  universe 
was  loaded.  It  signified  that  the  system  of  things 
was  going  forward  through  storm  to  peace,  not 
backward  through  peace  to  storm.  The  ultimatum 
was  order,  not  chaos.  It  is  easy  to  see  how  naturally 
Noah's  mind,  assured  by  the  appearance  of  the 
rainbow  after  the  flood,  of  the  way  the  procession 
of  things  was  going,  reverted  to  the  covenant  which 
God  had  made  with  man  and  found  a  special  cove- 
nant here  in  the  bow.  The  special  covenant  was 
God's  intimation  in  the  bow  that  there  would  be  no 
more  floods  like  that.  Notice  what  a  faith  Noah  must 
have  had  in  the  improved  condition  of  the  world, 
how  certainly  he  must  have  entertained  the  belief 
that  this  planet  and  her  human  interest  had  advanced 
beyond  the  point  where  a  deluge  had  any  Divine 
ministry.  It  is  a  grand  optimism  with  which  we 
have  to  do  in  this  old  mariner.  It  is  grand,  because 
a  grand  faith  was  under  it;  his  eye  saw  in  that 
rainbow,  not  the  old  facts  which  it  might  have 
suggested  before,  but  the  new  and  dear  truth  that  all 
disorder  was  in  the  hands  of  and  the  servant  of 
order;  that  over  the  tumult  there  was  a  dominating 
peace;  and  that  the  processes  of  God  in  His  evolu- 
tion of  the  good  made  revolution  the  slave  and 
evolution  the  master. 

Oh,  it  is  something  to  feel  that  we  are  living  in 
a  universe  where  the  forces  of  construction  are 
greater  than  the  forces  of  destruction.  Over  the 
thundering  rush  of  every  Niagara,  there  bends  the 


LESSONS    FROM    THE    RAINBOW  125 

rainbow  to  speak  of  the  quiet,  yea,  silent  powers 
and  processes  of  nature,  which  are  stronger  far  than 
its  awful  flood.  Around  every  war  have  been  the 
great  laws  and  duties  which,  like  shuttles,  have 
caught  up  the  stray  crimson  thread  and  woven  it 
into  a  garment  of  truer  peace.  We  are  in  a  storm- 
tossed  world.  But  things  are  going  one  way.  Peace 
will  come.  Revolution  is  the  wheel  within  the  larger 
wheel  of  evolution.  There  is  a  bow  after  the 
deluge.  It  is  the  same  bow  which  Ezekiel  saw.  He 
says,  "This  was  the  appearance  of  the  likeness  of 
the  glory  of  God."  Just  as  you  cannot  see  the  real 
splendor  of  light  until  its  beams  are  untwisted  into 
the  seven  chords  by  a  raindrop,  so  the  finest  glory 
of  God  is  revealed  only  as  it  falls  upon  the  rag- 
ged and  stormy  experience  of  history  and  the 
soul. 

But  there  is  another  truth.  The  rainbow  is  a 
revealer  of  the  real  nature  of  the  cloud.  "And  it 
shall  come  to  pass  that  when  I  bring  a  cloud  over 
the  earth,  that  the  bow  shall  be  seen  in  the  cloud." 
It  takes  true  eyes  and  the  true  point  of  view  to  see 
it,  but  wherever  there  is  a  rain  cloud  upon  which 
the  eye  falls,  there  is  a  bow  of  peace  hovering  over 
or  hiding  within  its  stormy  edges.  What  a  revela- 
tion of  the  secret  of  all  the  universe  is  that  truth — 
no  cloud  without  its  bow  of  beauty  and  of  peace! 
The  clouds  are  the  affairs  of  the  earth.  They  are  the 
exhalations  from  this  world's  life.  The  rainbow  is 
witness  to  the  fact  that  they,  in  every  stormy  drop, 
are  shot  through  with  the  beams  of  the  sun  in  the 


126    PATHS    TO    THE    CITY    OF    GOD 

heavens.  The  rainbow  is  the  bright  testimony  to  a 
victory;  the  sun  has  penetrated  the  darkness  and 
cold,  with  its  light  and  heat,  and  has  made  every 
drop  to  glorify  him  in  his  triumph.  Such  are  the 
hidden  possibilities  of  the  darkest  clouds  which 
hover  over  the  earth,  the  human  mind  and  the  hopes 
of  humanity. 

Now,  taking  up  these  three  ideas — first,  that  God 
is  faithful;  secondly,  that  the  rainbow's  following 
the  storm  showed  the  tendency  of  things  under  God 
toward  peace;  and  thirdly,  that  every  cloud's  having 
a  bow  upon  it  indicated  the  blessed  meaning  within 
our  cloudy  experiences — we  are  not  far  from  such  a 
view  of  God's  government  in  the  world  as  was 
practically  described  by  John,  when  he  looked  from 
Patmos  and  saw  "a  rainbow  round  about  the 
throne." 

A  great  Christian  poet  suggests  that  earth  may 
"be  but  the  shadow  of  heaven."  If  this  philosophy 
is  true,  the  rainbow  which  John  saw  around  the 
throne,  which  must  always  have  been  there,  had 
its  shadow  in  the  rainbow  of  earth  which  Noah 
saw.  Every  whisper  of  order  and  peace  on  earth 
is  the  utterance  of  a  Divine  order  and  perfect  peace 
in  heaven.  Surely  it  must  have  often  occurred  to 
you  that,  in  spite  of  the  many  unheavenly  things  on 
earth,  there  are  in  the  course  of  nature,  in  the  history 
of  the  personal  soul  and  of  humanity  at  large, 
wonderful  manifestations  of  the  fact  that  throughout 
the  universe  the  Divine  Government  is  one.  Pro- 
fessor Drummond  has  given  us  a  suggestive  book 


LESSONS    FROM    THE    RAINBOW  127 

on  "Natural  Law  in  the  Spiritual  World."  A  much 
more  suggestive  one  might  be  written  on  "Spiritual 
Law  in  the  Natural  World."  These  two  rainbows  of 
Noah  and  John  will  help  us  to  perceive  the  unity  of 
the  Divine  Government.  For,  after  all,  one  is  but 
the  reflection  of  the  other.  Noah  saw  in  nature  the 
truth  that  God  is  faithful,  that  the  ultimatum  of 
the  processes  of  nature  was  not  storm  but  peace; 
that  every  dark  and  cloudy  fact  of  earth  is  carrying 
with  it  a  bow  of  promise  because  there  is  a  sun  in 
the  heavens.  This  was  his  rainbow.  John  saw  in 
some  sort  of  revelation  that  at  last,  after  the  world's 
uneasy  career  had  been  run  and  the  gigantic  enemies 
of  goodness  and  truth  had  been  conquered  by  the 
Christ  of  God,  after  the  sun  of  righteousness  had 
penetrated  every  cloud  with  his  shafts  of  peaceful 
light,  the  throne  of  God,  the  symbol  of  the  Divine 
government,  should  seem  to  be  entirely  surrounded 
with  this  circle  of  love  and  peace.  This  was  John's 
rainbow. 

Of  course  John's  rainbow  round  the  throne  seems 
to  mean  much  more  than  Noah's  simple  and  natural 
bow,  because,  as  we  say,  we  get  into  the  world  of 
spiritual  things  with  John's  views,  for  Christ  Jesus 
has  come  into  history  between  Noah  and  John,  and 
by  the  atonement  we  can  understand  how  earth- 
born  clouds  of  sin  have  been  made  to  bear  upon  their 
stormy  edges  rainbows  of  peace  because  of  the 
shining  of  the  sun  of  righteousness. 

Let  us,  however,  stop  to  remember  that  there 
are  not  two   universes,   but  one.      Every   natural 


128    PATHS    TO    THE    CITY    OF    GOD 

phenomenon  has  a  spiritual  fact  behind  it,  of  which 
there  is  but  the  appearance.  The  world  is  but  the 
embodied  thought  of  God.  No  rainbow  has  ever 
stayed  out  upon  the  storm  which  has  not  been 
the  physical  manifestation  of  metaphysical  reality. 
God's  throne,  which  John  saw,  has  been  back 
of  things  from  the  beginning.  Every  fragment  of 
nature  has  borne  the  mark  of  the  kingdom  of 
heaven,  whether  we  have  seen  it  or  not.  And  we 
may  never  understand  sky  or  flower  or  sea  until, 
like  Noah's  rainbow,  each  becomes  in  some  sense, 
the  mirror  of  the  Divine  government  out  of  which 
it  came. 

What  God  has  done,  God  meant  to  do  in 
all  the  past.  Christ  Jesus — as  a  gift,  as  a  sacrifice, 
as  a  sun  of  righteousness  in  the  heavens  of  life,  as 
the  creator  of  every  rainbow  of  peace  or  promise 
by  his  shining  on  the  clouds  of  life  and  the  soul — 
is  not  a  fact  of  barely  nineteen  centuries  of  age.  He 
was  the  sun  from  the  beginning.  Yea,  He  was  "the 
Lamb  slain  from  the  foundation  of  the  world."  The 
rainbow  is  the  result  of  the  struggle  of  opposite 
forces — the  storm  and  the  sun.  It  is  the  witness  of 
the  sun's  victory.  "The  rainbow  round  about  the 
throne"  is  the  result  of  Divine  love — the  sun  of 
righteousness  sending  the  darts  of  His  life  through 
the  earth-born  clouds  of  sin  and  hopelessness  and 
woe  which  covered  human  life.  But  this  was,  as  I 
have  said,  a  plan  of  the  Divine  government  from 
the  beginning.  God  had  given  His  Son  in  the 
morning  of  the  long  eternity.    Fatherhood  is  eternal 


LESSONS    FROM    THE    RAINBOW  129 

in  God.  So  soon  as  man's  creation  and  career  came 
into  the  imagination  of  heaven,  clouds  began  to  rise 
about  the  throne.  Doubts  as  to  the  power  and 
future  of  the  Divine  government  arose,  as  soon  as 
God  determined  to  create  man  and  endow  him  with 
that  dreadful  attribute  of  freedom.  But  the  glory 
of  God  in  the  eternal  Son  shone  through  them  at 
once.  The  rainbow  of  promise,  the  covenant,  was 
made.  "The  Lamb  was  slain  from  the  foundation 
of  the  world."  There  was  always  a  rainbow  round 
about  the  throne. 

It  is  one  of  the  old  thoughts  to  which  our  best 
modern  religious  thinking  is  returning,  that  the 
incarnation  of  God  in  Christ  would  have  occurred 
even  if  there  had  been  no  sin,  no  fall  of  man,  no  loss 
of  Eden,  There  is  infinite  promise  of  the  Christ  in 
creation.  Things  seem  to  have  a  resistless  impulse 
Christ-ward.  Of  course,  as  Canon  Westcott  says, 
"there  is  no  question  on  any  side  that  everything 
of  suffering  and  shame  connected  with  the  incarna- 
tion was  due  to  the  fall,"  and  he  adds :  "We  are 
led  by  Scripture  to  regard  the  circumstances  of  the 
incarnation  as  separable  from  the  idea  of  incarna- 
tion, and  to  hold  that  the  circumstances  of  the 
incarnation  were  due  to  sin,  while  the  idea  of  the 
incarnation  was  due  to  the  primal  and  absolute  pur- 
pose of  love  foreshadowed  in  creation,  apart  from 
sin,  which  was  contingent."  It  is  blessed  to  think 
what  the  incarnation  of  God  in  Jesus  would  have 
been  if  our  sin  had  not  dragged  the  Christ  into  such 
deeps  of  humiliation.    The  incarnation,  however,  as 


130    PATHS    TO    THE    CITY    OF    GOD 

it  is,  is  the  explanation  of  the  physical  universe  which 
has  groaned  in  pain  until  now.  It  yet  "waiteth  for 
the  manifestation  of  the  Sons  of  God."  Christ  is 
the  Word  of  God  from  the  beginning,  the  reason  of 
creation,  and  the  ultimate  fact  to  which  all  its 
processes  lead.  With  such  a  conception  of  creation, 
how  clearly  does  the  rainbow  of  Noah,  teaching  the 
Divine  Faithfulness,  teaching  the  fact  that  this 
physical  system  is  passing  through  changes  from 
storm  to  peace,  teaching  that  this  process  leaves  the 
floods  behind  it  and  not  before  it,  teaching  that  on 
every  cloud  there  rests  a  bow  of  promise,  that  there 
is  a  sun  in  the  heavens — how  clearly,  I  say,  does  the 
bow  of  Noah  reflect  for  an  early  age  the  greater 
rainbow  around  the  throne.  How  surely  is  "nature 
the  parable  of  grace." 

For  this  rainbow  round  about  the  throne  takes 
up  and  completes  the  covenants  and  promises  of 
that  bow  which  Noah  saw.  John's  vision  was  a 
vision  of  a  redeemed  universe.  The  sacrifice  of 
Christ  is  its  security,  as  it  was  its  hope.  But  what 
does  this  sacrifice  mean  ?  What  does  Calvary  mean, 
which  Noah's  rainbow  did  not  suggest  ? 

Let  us  take  the  three  truths  in  Noah's  rainbow : 
I.  In  Calvary's  awful  scene,  we  behold  the 
Divine  Faithfulness.  Clouds  of  sin  have  risen  from 
the  earth;  a  shoreless  ocean  of  despair  has  covered 
the  life  of  man;  but  God — the  Faithful  God,  the 
Covenant-keeping  God,  the  God  who  remembers  that 
man  is  His  child,  and  that  in  his  very  constitution 
and  life  He  has  left  pledges  and  intimations  that  help 


LESSONS    FROM    THE    RAINBOW  131 

him  to  look  heavenward  from  some  ark  of  hope — He 
has  not  forgotten;  He  is  keeping  His  word  of  grace, 
and  the  clouds  are  shot  through  and  through  with 
the  power  of  Christ,  the  Sun  of  Righteousness,  Sin 
is  retreating  like  the  flood,  and  peace,  "My  peace," 
as  Christ  says,  hangs  like  a  rainbow  above  the  cross 
of  Jesus  and  the  life  of  man. 

II.  In  the  work  of  Jesus  as  the  world's  Saviour 
we  behold  the  trend  of  things,  the  direction  in  which 
the  organized  universe  is  working,  "My  Father 
worketh  hitherto,  and  I  work."  God  in  Christ 
created  the  world,  God  in  Christ  was  redeeming  the 
world.  "My  Father  worketh  hitherto" — in  every 
sullen  storm,  in  every  lightning  flash,  in  every  over- 
whelmed continent,  in  every  roaring  ocean,  in  every 
cloud  which  darkens  the  sky,  "My  Father" — O, 
what  a  vision  of  the  Fatherhood  of  God  in  creation 
and  history!  "My  Father  worketh  hitherto,  and  I 
work,"  That  was  what  the  cross  said,  as  the  rays  of 
a  Divine  righteousness  shot  through  the  cloud 
mists  of  human  unrighteousness  and  made  that  rain- 
bow of  peace  which  we  call  the  atonement.  The 
universe  has  its  impulse  and  movement  toward  a 
perfect  peace.  That  is  seen  in  nature,  in  history,  in 
the  life  of  the  human  soul.  The  Noah  of  science 
sees  the  flood  forever  past,  as  he  studies  the  slow 
processes  of  nature.  It  marked  an  era  in  the  life 
of  the  world.  Literatures  are  full  of  its  traditions; 
the  earth  tells  the  story  of  Genesis,  It  was  an  hour 
when  the  earth  was  being  pushed  along  from  one 
stage  of  its  evolution  to  another.    But  the  difference 


132    PATHS    TO    THE    CITY    OF    GOD 

between  that  second  stage  and  the  first  revealed  the 
fact  that  the  law  of  progress  was  in  Paul's  statement, 
"first  the  natural,  afterwards  the  spiritual."  Every 
step  in  the  process  of  human  history  is  likewise  a 
witness:  "first  the  natural,  then  the  spiritual." 
Revolution — the  process  of  destruction — the  flood 
comes  first;  evolution  is  the  master — the  process  of 
construction  and  renewal  gathers  up  the  remnants 
of  revolution,  the  surviving  clouds  that  fly,  and 
penetrates  them  with  the  peaceful  sunlight,  until  a 
rainbow  comes.  The  whole  work  of  Jesus  on 
Calvary  and  at  the  grave  of  Joseph  was  described 
when  He  met  the  disciples  after  the  resurrection  and 
said :  "Peace !"  The  storm  and  sun  had  struggled 
together  and  out  of  it  all  came  a  rainbow  of  peace. 
So  shall  every  evil  cloud  be  penetrated  by  the  good- 
ness of  God. 

Notice  the  contrast,  right  here,  in  the  methods 
of  God.  Sin  was  cast  out  of  the  world  under  Noah, 
by  force  and  flood.  It  was  by  a  fearful  destruction 
that  the  sound  beginning  for  a  new  human  society 
was  obtained.  Peace  came,  as  it  always  comes,  when 
goodness  alone  was  left.  On  the  other  hand,  sin 
was  cast  out,  or  shall  be  cast  out  of  the  world  under 
Christ,  by  the  persuasions  of  love,  by  the  victory  of 
faith,  by  the  love  of  God  reaching  the  heart  of  man. 
His  is  a  process  of  saving,  not  of  destroying.  Surely 
there  is  an  advance  in  the  history  of  man  and  of 
goodness.  Surely  the  rainbow  round  about  the 
throne  is  a  full  circle,  while  Noah's  was  but  a 
segment  and  a  shadow. 


LESSONS    FROM    THE    RAINBOW  133 

III.  In  the  triumph  of  Christ,  the  whole  secret  of 
a  clouded  universe  is  seen.  "Whenever/'said  God 
to  Noah,  "I  shall  bring  a  cloud  over  the  earth;  the 
bow  shall  be  upon  the  cloud."  Now  Christ — incar- 
nate goodness — gives  the  hidden  meaning  of  the 
world,  as  the  sun  translates  the  cloud  into  a  beautiful 
bow.  Any  cloud  of  time,  or  of  man's  life,  is  not  to 
be  taken  and  studied  alone.  We  can  never  under- 
stand a  sorrow  until  the  infinite  purpose  of  God,  as 
expressed  in  Christ  Jesus,  shines  upon  it.  In  the 
most  awful  woe  of  earth — the  killing  of  Jesus  by 
men  whom  He  came  to  save — even  with  that  cloud 
we  get  a  rainbow.  "Mercy  and  truth  are  met 
together"  in  the  atonement.  The  peace  does  come 
out  of  storm.  So  we  must  treat  our  cloudy  days 
and  experiences.  May  we  let  the  sun  of  righteous- 
ness burst  upon  them,  in  our  faith.  Behind  the 
annoying  dualism  of  good  and  evil,  storm  and  sun, 
lies  the  fact  that  good  is  omnipotent  and  the  sun  will 
at  last  shine  through.  Your  tears  are  not  to  be 
understood  alone.  Sorrow  is  not  all  of  sorrow. 
Never  until  your  tears  are  the  media  through  which 
the  sun  weaves  rainbows  of  peace  do  you  get  their 
real  meaning. 

Browning  sees  how  strong  are  these  great  ideas; 
that  this  is  one  universe,  not  two ;  that  the  rationale 
of  this  universe,  natural  and  spiritual,  is  Christ;  that 
every  Noah's  rainbow  seen  on  these  skies  must  be  a 
shadow  in  the  nature  of  that  more  substantial  rain- 
bow which  John  saw  round  about  the  throne.  Christ 
is  the  meaning  of  this  whole  system  of  things,  from 


134    PATHS    TO    THE    CITY    OF    GOD 

the  throne  to  the  grave  of  your  little  child.  Perhaps 
the  great  poet  has  never  so  powerfully  presented 
this  truth  as  when  his  wandering  seeker  for  truth,  in 
"Christinas  Eve"  leaves  the  haunts  of  men  and  the 
temples  of  human  worship,  to  find  the  real  Christ 
elsewhere. 

"  Suddenly 
The  rain  and  the  wind  ceased,  and  the  sky 
Received  at  once  the  full  fruition 
Of  the  moon's  consummate  apparition. 
The  black  barricade  was  riven, 
Ruined  beneath  her  feet,  and  driven 
Deep  into  the  West ;  while  bare  and  breathless, 
North  and  South  and  East  and  West  lay  ready 
For  a  glorious  thing  that  dauntless,  deathless, 
Sprang  across  them  and  stood  ready. 
'Twas  a  moon-rainbow  vast  and  perfect 
As  the  mother  moon's  self,  full  in  face. 
It  rose  distinctly  at  the  base, 
With  its  seven  proper  colors  chorded, 
Which  still  in  the  rising  were  compressed 
Until  at  last  they  coalesced. 
And  Supreme  the  spectral  creature  lorded 
In  triumph  of  whitest  white, 
Above  which  intervened  the  night. 
But  far  above,  too,  like  only  the  next, 
The  second  of  a  wondrous  sequence, 
Reaching  in  rarer  and  rarer  frequence, 
Till  the  heaven  of  heavens  was  circumflexed, 
Another  rainbow  rose,  a  mightier — 
A  fainter,  flushier  and  flightier — 
Rapture  dying  along  the  verge. 
O  whose  foot  shall  I  see  emerge, 
Whose  from  the  straining  topmost  dark, 
On  to  the  keystone  of  that  arc  ? 

.  •  «  *  • 

He  was  there  ! 
He  Himself  with  his  human  ear." 


LESSONS    FROM    THE    RAINBOW  135 

May  you  and  I  so  learn  to  look  at  nature,  at 
human  history  and  at  the  culture  of  the  soul  under 
God,  that  everywhere  there  shall  be  a  rainbow  which 
shall  be  a  shadowy  segment  of  the  rainbow  which 
makes  full  circle  around  the  throne ! 


VII 
TREASURES   OF   THE   SNOW 

(A  November  Sermon) 

'*  Hast  thou  entered  into  the  treasures  of  the  snow?' 
fob  xxxviti.  22. 


S 


O  much  for  Job.     Let  me  read  also  a  modern 
psalm. 


"  Come  see  the  north  wind's  masonry. 
Out  of  an  unseen  quarry  evermore 
Furnished  with  tile,  the  fierce  artificer 
Curves  his  white  bastions  with  projected  roof 
Round  every  windward  stake,  or  tree,  or  door. 
Speeding,  the  myriad-handed,  his  wild  work 
So  fanciful,  so  savage,  naught  cares  he 
For  number  or  proportion.     Mockingly 
On  coop  or  kennel  he  hangs  Parian  wreaths  ; 
A  swan-like  form  invests  the  hidden  thorn  ; 
Fills  up  the  farmer's  lane  from  wall  to  wall, 
Maugre  the  farmer's  sighs  ;  and,  at  the  gate, 
A  tapering  turret  overtops  the  work 
And  when  his  hours  are  numbered,  and  the  world 
Is  all  his  own,  retiring,  as  he  were  not. 
Leaves,  when  the  sun  appears,  astonished  Art 
To  mimic  in  slow  structures,  stone  by  stone, 
Built  in  an  age,  the  mad  wind's  night-work, 
The  frolic  architecture  of  the  snow." 

So,  to  a  later  poet  than  the  author  of  the 
Book  of  Job,  appeared  the  snowstorm.  Emer- 
son, however,  writing  this  poem  from  a  summit 
not  so  lofty  as  that  upon  which  he  stood  when  he 

186 


TREASURES    OF    THE    SNOW    137 

wrote  his  essays  and  other  poems,  gave  only  an  in- 
complete answer  to  the  question  :  "Hast  thou  entered 
into  the  treasures  of  the  snow  ?"  If  he  had  taken  the 
idea  of  manhood,  which  informs  most  of  his  litera- 
ture, and  measured  the  significance  of  a  snowflake 
by  its  equations,  he  would  have  found  it  quite  as 
heavily  loaded  with  meaning  as  "Concord  Monu- 
ment" or  "Monadnoc."  For  our  appreciation  of 
nature,  in  modern  literature,  has  grown  out  of  an 
enlarged  appreciation  of  man.  Ruskin  and  Words- 
worth have  voiced  forth  the  fact  that  nature  is  great 
and  significant  only  as  his  schoolhouse,  because 
man  is  great  and  significant  as  its  schoolboy.  Every 
cloud  that  passes  over  the  head  of  a  son  of  God 
has  a  value  and  reference  to  greatness,  proportioned 
to  the  greatness  of  man  on  whom  it  casts  its 
shadow.  Every  tree  has  a  new  significance  because 
the  man  who  is  trained  by  its  influence  has  also  a  new 
significance.  Increase  the  value  of  your  boy  a  hun- 
dred-fold, and  forthwith  what  shall  touch  him  has  a 
hundred-fold  value.  And  so  the  modern  spirit 
answers  the  question,  "Hast  thou  entered  into  the 
treasures  of  the  snow?"  with  a  different  account  of 
those  treasures.  It  has  a  different  idea  of  man  than 
ruled  the  mind  which  proposed  the  query. 

Nature  is  the  eternal  thinking  now  become  a 
fact;  and  we  shorten  up  the  word  thinking  by 
striking  out  some  letters  and  calling  it  thing.  It 
was  that  from  the  beginning,  though  it  took  ages  to 
apprehend  the  fact.  It  is  the  precipitate  of  the 
thought  of  God — the  residue  of  the  chaos  which 


138    PATHS    TO    THE    CITY    OF    GOD 

ideas  made,  conformed  and  full  of  order.  A  snow 
crystal  is  therefore  only  a  chip  of  the  marble  falling 
from  God's  chisel  edge,  as  He  cuts  from  out  the 
mortal  universe  its  immortal  soul  and  life.  All 
nature  is  His  effort  to  create  man.  After  man  comes, 
the  very  route  by  which  he  came  becomes  a  means 
of  education  for  him.  He  takes  nature  which  yielded 
him,  and  he  uses  nature  as  a  means  wherewith  to 
become  acquainted  with  himself  and  the  destinies 
before  him.  So  the  snowflake  becomes  to  the 
student  of  man  and  man's  life  what  it  cannot  be  to 
the  poet  of  its  crystal.  The  student  of  lines  and 
angles  sees  in  it  marvelous  accuracy  and  wonderful 
beauty;  to  the  moralist  it  is  only  a  wrapped  up  letter 
from  God — a  communication  in  ice,  a  message  in 
crystals,  full  of  suggestions  and  meanings  for  man- 
hood. 

Snow  is  only  another  form  of  the  aqueous  vapor 
which  comes  in  dew  and  rain  and  hail.  And  it  is  to 
the  world  which  we  see  what  other  crystals,  which 
are  made  out  of  the  same  spiritual  air  which  gives 
joy  and  gladness  and  love,  are  to  the  world  which 
we  do  not  see.  Multitudes  of  such  crystals,  all 
blown  together  by  some  sad  fact  into  a  drift  before 
the  door  of  our  soul  and  on  the  window-sill  of  life — 
this  cold  white  mass  we  call  trouble.  It  is  only 
frozen  joy;  it  is  almost  liquid  love  crystallized 
suddenly  by  some  frost.  For  the  very  elements 
which  make  the  keenest  happiness,  when  caught  by 
some  cold  air  of  woe,  make  keenest  sorrow.  It 
would  have  been  dew  if  it  had  not  had  to  pass 


TREASURES    OF    THE    SNOW    139 

through  the  cold  air;  now  it  is  hoarfrost.  It  would 
have  been  only  rain  if  no  cold  atmosphere  had 
intervened;  now  it  is  hail  or  flakes  of  snow.  Our 
troubles  would  have  been  joys  if  the  chilling  air  had 
not  caught  them  as  they  descended  and  frozen  them. 
How  beautiful  they  appear,  if  you  are  brave 
enough  to  look  at  them !  Put  them  into  your  warm 
palm  and  they  melt,  no  snow  crystal  is  more  definite 
than  these  forms  of  trouble;  and  it  is  a  rule  of 
crystallization  that  all  crystals  are  definite  in  con- 
stitution as  well  as  construction.  The  vapor  of 
physical  life  in  the  air  which  we  do  see  does  not 
begin  to  yield  such  a  variety  of  snow-flowers  as  that 
of  the  spiritual  life  which  we  do  not  see.  But  who 
has  "entered  into  the  treasures  of  the  snow?"  It 
takes  a  brave  and  careful  scientist  to  find  out  much 
about  its  constitution;  and  it  takes  a  brave  and 
thorough  manhood  to  stop  and  be  patient  enough  to 
detect  the  crystalline  formation,  the  frozen  logic  of 
his  trouble.  Howling  winds  beat  against  our  doors, 
and  the  snowstorm  makes  its  sad  discord  on  our 
window  pane.  Who  gets  its  treasure  ?  Not  he  who 
merely  admires  its  beauty,  or  uses  its  smoothness, 
or  enjoys  its  glory,  but  he  to  whom  it  brings 
lessons  in  life — he  gets  the  treasures  of  the  snow. 
And  so  I  have  no  fine  description  or  accurate  draw- 
ing, or  poetic  figuring  of  the  snow  for  you  to-day. 
I  only  believe  that  this  day — so  warm  and  sweet — is 
just  the  day  for  us  to  remember  enough  of  summer 
wherewith  to  appreciate  something  of  yesterday's 
winter,  and  that  yesterday,  so  cold  and  bleak,  was 


140    PATHS    TO    THE    CITY    OF    GOD 

just  the  day  for  us  to  remember  enough  of  winter 
wherewith  to  appreciate  something  of  to-day's 
summer. 

One  of  the  best  and  perhaps  most  obvious 
"treasures  of  the  snow"  is  its  value  as  a  fertihzer. 
It  is  the  poor  man's  substitute  for  guano  and  bone- 
dust.  Every  agricultural  writer  recognizes  this  fact. 
Many  a  sheaf  of  wheat  is  a  sheaf  of  reaped  snow- 
stonn.  Many  bushels  of  golden  grain  are  but 
snowflakes  turned  to  life,  in  rye  and  barley.  The 
great  wheat-fields  must  have  snow  or  the  substitute 
for  it.  It  is  better  than  the  manure  which  seizes  hold 
of  stubborn  clods  and  dried  fields,  for  it  wraps  them 
with  its  white  cloak  and  makes  them  warm  for 
spring  sowing.  It  refuses  to  conduct  their  heat 
away.  It  hides  it  in  radiant  silence  while  it  wakes 
the  earth  up  to  its  coming  possibility.  Nothing  so 
relieves  a  field  of  the  care  of  a  crop,  or  helps  it  to 
forget  the  scratching  of  the  plow  or  harrow,  or 
makes  it  independent  of  the  sun  which  exhorted  it 
to  work,  as  a  heavy  snowstorm  which  hides  it  from 
December  until  April.  How  farmers  look  for  a 
snowstorm  to  cover  up  the  wheat  during  January 
and  February !  How  much  more  the  agriculturalist 
can  get  out  of  his  sleigh  riding  on  the  snow  on  the 
road  if  there  is  a  good  snow  covering  up  the  plants 
whose  product  in  grain  shall  be  threshed  in  the  next 
August!  Everybody  calculates  on  the  snow.  It  is 
the  wet  nurse  of  the  harvest,  as  the  earth  is  the 
mother.  Its  treasures  pay  interest  in  granaries  and 
barrels  of  flour. 


TREASURES    OF    THE    SNOW    141 

Have  I  not  been  outlining  the  history  and 
significance  of  disappointment,  defeat,  faihire,  and 
other  forms  of  personal  bereavement  or  sorrow? 
Yes,  indeed,  for  as  the  snow  is  to  the  agriculture 
of  the  earth  the  poor  man's  as  well  as  the  rich  man's 
fertilizer,  so  also  is  trouble  to  the  human  soul.  Its 
mighty  factorage  no  human  being  can  mention, 
until  the  entire  history  of  the  heroes  and  heroines  is 
in.  Its  energy,  to  make  the  desert  blossom  as  the 
rose,  will  not  be  known  until  every  harp,  that  was 
played  first  to  make  music  in  woe,  shall  be  strung  to 
heaven's  tones  and  be  touched  with  ministering 
fingers.  Its  far-reaching  fertilization — O,  how  vast 
— shall  speak  in  the  granaries  of  God,  in  the 
golden  grain  of  a  rare  and  enriched  manhood,  in 
the  solid  harvest  of  a  true  and  heaven-taught  woman- 
hood— in  the  fields  of  all  the  future  of  the  universe 
which,  under  any  sun  or  in  any  harvest-home,  shall 
proclaim  the  treasures  of  the  snow  of  sorrow,  the 
frozen  unlocked  wealth  of  private  grief.  Every 
man  who  has  to  write  the  record  of  the  race  has  to 
seek  for  the  beginnings  of  every  great  human  harvest 
under  the  snow  of  its  defeat.  Nations  are  fertilized 
likewise.  Their  sorrows  make  them  able  to  produce 
liberty.  Russia  shall  turn  the  centuries  of  this  snow 
of  tyranny  into  a  harvest  of  Democracy.  Ireland 
will  translate  the  silent  music  of  her  snow  into 
heroism,  and  when  the  sun  comes  to  melt  the  snow 
of  England's  wrong  way,  Ireland  will  find  the 
springtime  of  liberty.  Out  of  revolution  after 
revolution — from  beneath  snowstorm  after  snow- 


142    PATHS    TO    THE    CITY    OF    GOD 

storm — came  France,  and  only  the  fertilizing  effects 
of  despotic  wrong  unto  them  made  our  fathers  bring 
forth  a  harvest  of  freedom. 

In  private  life  it  is  still  the  more  evident. 
Sorrow  is  a  fertilizer.  It  is  God's  snow  to  make  the 
wheat-fields  bring  forth  plenteously.  It  is  difficult  to 
grow  great  men  where  there  is  no  snow.  Only  on 
the  bosom  of  Alpine  snows  grows  the  Alpine  rose, 
with  its  breast  and  heart  of  fire.  The  winter  of 
trouble  and  the  summer  of  joy  must  be  matched. 
What  examples  of  it  sit  before  me  ?  Your  nature  was 
unproductive  in  indolence  until  the  money  that  your 
father  gave  you  was  lost.  That  snow  fertilized  you, 
and  you  brought  forth  a  fortune  which  you  have 
earned  yourself.  And  another  was  careless  and 
somnolent  with  laziness  until  a  crash  came,  and  the 
first  premonition  of  the  coming  snowstorm  to  cover 
you,  was  a  flake  from  the  constable.  Out  of  that 
snow  you  came,  to  translate  its  crystal  purity  into 
life.  Disappointment  vv^as  your  salvation.  Nothing 
but  being  snowbound  by  defeat  can  rouse  some  men. 
Then,  like  a  great  captain,  they  cry,  "Reform  the 
lines,  and  attack  the  enemy  at  day-break."  Old 
energies  that  a  man  did  not  dream  of  he  finds  at  his 
hand.  It  may  be  that  he  never  had  any  use  for  his 
brain  or  his  fingers;  then  trouble  comes,  and  snow- 
bound with  persecution,  he,  like  Reni,  makes  a 
picture  of  the  "Nativity"  which  astonishes  all  men. 
It  may  be  that  he  never  felt  his  throbbing  heart  or 
his  eloquent  lips,  until  a  snow  covers  his  patriotic 
soul,  and  he  comes  forth  fertilized  into  a  Patrick 


TREASURES    OF    THE    SNOW    143 

Henry.  The  best  women  I  know  have  been  made 
acquainted  with  the  old  unused  powers,  just  Hke 
a  field  while  under  snow.  They  roused.  New 
energies  came,  and  all  the  finest  life  has  taken  its 
root  in  suffering  souls,  just  as  all  the  best  wheat 
can  keep  warm  and  does  grow  under  snow.  Prize 
these  fertilizers  which  the  Great  Agriculturalist 
sends  upon  you.  He  is  determined  to  have  a  fine 
harvest,  and  to  him  who  is  brave  enough  to  trans- 
late trouble  into  manhood,  it  will  be  like  gathering 
cold  snow  in  your  hand,  which  turns  to  golden  wheat 
while  you  look  at  it. 

"Hast  thou  entered  into  the  treasures  of  the 
snow?"  Unless  you  know  something  of  what  lies  in 
that  eloquent  word  "Home"  you  must  say  "No;  I 
have  not."  For  in  view  of  all  beauty  of  crystal 
whiteness,  with  all  respect  to  that  charm  of  its  frolic 
architecture,  it  must  be  said  that  one  of  the  richest 
of  the  treasures  of  the  snow  and  winter  is  that  they 
combine  to  make  our  homes  more  valuable  unto  us 
than  they  are  under  other  circumstances,  and  they 
add  to  the  flashing  firelight  and  wann  rooms  an 
indescribable  cheer.  The  long  summer  days  of  work 
and  the  short  evenings  of  rest  have  a  tendency  to 
make  us  forgetful  of  the  fact  that  home  is  m.ore  than 
a  handy  place  to  sleep  in,  or  a  restaurant  where  we 
take  our  meals.  Indeed,  summer,  which  ought  to  be 
sacred  to  make  winter  and  home  a  perpetual  June, 
is  liable  to  exile  us  from  the  domestic  life  of  con- 
tented happiness,  and  it  substitutes  a  thousand 
luxuries  of  sky  and  field   for  the  love  of  home. 


144    PATHS    TO    THE    CITY    OF    GOD 

Where  there  is  no  snow,  there  is  no  high  ideal  of 
home.  The  countries  without  winter  and  storm  do 
not  so  truly  put  the  patriotic  inspiration  of  the  home 
feeling  into  our  politics,  nor  do  they  carry  the  great 
heart  of  the  people  in  their  sweep  of  destiny. 

Home  has  always  been  a  rallying  idea  of  battle 
and  victory.  "For  your  homes"  kindle  the  holy  fires 
of  love  of  country  into  a  blaze  on  fields  of  the  past, 
and  every  man  who  feels  the  deepest  impulses  of 
patriotism  reads  in  his  country's  flag  the  protection 
of  his  home.  No  fighting  has  been  so  brave,  no 
battle  has  been  so  courageous,  no  height  has  been 
so  easily  scaled,  no  fortress  has  been  so  nobly  taken, 
as  those  over  whose  names  the  halo  of  home  has  cast 
its  ineffable  glory.  Spears  have  been  bended  and 
swords  have  been  broken  against  the  love  of  home. 
It  has  surged  up  against  the  mouth  of  cannon  and 
stopped  the  volley.  It  has  flung  its  wounded  en- 
thusiasm against  the  bristling  steel  and  made  it  dull. 
It  has  thrown  itself  between  an  advancing,  victori- 
ous, splendid  artillery  and  a  few  thatched  cottages, 
and  turned  victory  into  defeat.  It  has  stood  like  a 
wall  of  fire  in  front  of  rifles  and  smoke  and  war, 
and  driving  back  the  invader,  it  has  crossed  his 
rivers,  drenched  with  cold  and  covered  with  ice;  it 
has  climbed  his  mountains  of  ice  and  rock;  it  has 
plunged  into  the  jaws  of  defeat  and  waved  its  flag 
from  the  grave  of  its  invader,  signaling  back  into 
those  who  saw  the  heroism  of  the  love  of  home. 

Whenever  a  country  loses  it,  in  the  hearts  of  the 
people,  the  country  is  lost.     Home  is  the  basis  of 


TREASURES    OF    THE    SNOW   145 

patriotism  everywhere.  It  antedates  church  and 
state.  It  is  the  mission  of  the  church  to  make  it 
rich  and  the  mission  of  the  state  to  make  it  secure. 
What  shall  we  say,  therefore,  of  any  country  whose 
legislation  always  tends  to  make  it  more  and  more 
difficult  to  obtain  a  home?  It  is  engaged  in  the 
easiest  method  of  suicide.  It  is  proceeding  with  the 
task  of  its  own  dissolution.  To-day  greed  has 
poverty  standing  ready  to  plunge  the  knife  of 
rebellious  revolution  into  her  back,  because,  by  a 
wretched  system  of  selfishness,  a  man  born  without  a 
home  must  know  that  it  shall  be  too  nearly  impos- 
sible for  him  to  achieve  one.  If  wealthy  America 
desires  to  make  herself  a  self-centered  unity — of 
which  she  dares  to  dream  to-day — let  her  make  it 
harder  for  a  man  to  own  what  he  ought  not  to  have 
and  easier  for  men  of  all  grades  to  own  a  home.  For 
these,  men  will  give  up  life;  for  these,  men  will 
wage  war;  for  these,  which  it  ought  to  protect,  men 
will  love  our  government  and  Constitution.  We  are 
not  yet  lost,  thank  God.  As  the  snow  does  make 
us  enter  our  homes  here  in  this  land,  let  us  thank 
God  and  our  fathers  that  in  general  it  may  still  be 
said  that  no  man  need  go  homeless  here;  that  a 
large  part  of  the  continent  may  be  achieved  and  made 
into  homes,  and  that  from  the  rolling,  circling  smoke 
of  the  homes  of  the  millions  situated  on  every  moun- 
tain-side, gathered  in  every  city,  civilizing  every 
valley,  there  will  rise  the  love  of  country  which  no 
invader  can  destroy. 

But  as  there  are  other  invaders  besides  foreign 


146    PATHS    TO    THE    CITY    OF    GOD 

foes,  so  also,  there  is  another  patriotism  besides  love 
of  one's  own  nation.  Home  stands  as  the  great 
breakwater  against  the  enemies  of  manhood  and 
blesses  in  its  growth  that  love  of  the  universal 
country  of  right,  and  truth,  and  holiness  which  elder 
thinkers  have  named  Heaven.  So  really  near  are 
home  and  heaven  logically,  that  they  have  associ- 
ated themselves  together  in  that  deep,  unconscious 
vocabulary  of  our  unwritten  philosophy  of  life.  The 
true  home  is  so  like  the  true  heaven  that  the  true 
heaven  is  called  the  home  of  the  soul.  The  alliance 
is  deeper  than  our  speech.  For  home  is  more  than 
chairs  and  tables  and  a  stove,  with  beds  and  some 
beautiful  ornaments,  just  as  heaven  is  more  than  a 
throne  and  a  great  light  and  a  river  and  many 
beautiful  streets.  Home  is  the  embodiment  of 
the  heart's  best  throbbings,  the  manifestation  of 
the  soul's  sweetest  affections,  the  realization  of  the 
spirit's  dearest  desires.  It  is  the  soul's  place  of 
peace,  rather  than  a  place  to  sleep  in.  It  is  the 
spirit's  calm  and  the  mind's  best  resting  place,  rather 
than  a  place  where  you  get  your  breakfast.  And  the 
treasure  of  the  snow  is,  that  it  helps  us  from  a  home 
where  we  only  sleep  and  eat,  into  one  where  we  grow 
into  manhood  and  womanhood  by  the  influence  of 
mutual  love.  That  rift  of  snow  piled  on  the  window- 
sill  and  that  howling  blast  without  will  make  a  man 
or  a  woman  feel  the  cheer  in  the  fitful  fire  and  help 
them  to  find  a  joy  in  the  warm  inclosure.  But  if  it 
is  only  the  joy  of  not  being  cold,  or  the  cheer  of 
being  "good  and  comfortable,"  it  is  only  a  shadow  of 


TREASURES    OF    THE    SNOW    147 

a  home.  For  home  is  love  crystallized.  It  is  the 
soul's  best  look  earthward  made  into  a  building  and 
filled  with  the  wares  of  affection.  There  is  no  great 
treasure  in  this  winter's  snow  to  you,  if  you  have  a 
home  which  simply  saves  you  a  little  money  and 
not  a  good  deal  of  manhood.  There  is  no  treasure 
in  anything  to  a  soul  who  cannot  take  it.  There 
are  no  riches  in  this  winter's  cold  and  rain  and 
storm,  if  you  live  with  your  companion  because  it 
is  cheap.  Every  snowstorm  will  be  a  signal  for  a 
domestic  prison  to  hold  you.  There  is  no  treasure 
in  this  snow  if  you  married  because  you  thought 
you  could  get  rid  of  yourself,  because,  as  a  certain 
humorous  philosopher  says,  you  will  find  that  "it  is 
a  game  that  two  can  play  at  and  neither  win." 
The  "treasures  of  the  snow"  come  to  men  and 
women  who  are  fine  enough  to  appreciate  them.  A 
snowstorm  only  develops  the  joy  or  the  sadness,  the 
heaven  or  hell  of  the  home.  It  brings  out  the  native 
ability  of  a  man  or  a  woman  to  be  like  Satan  or  to 
be  like  an  angel.  To  be  a  true  man  or  woman,  every 
snowstorm  means  fun  for  the  children  in  the  even- 
ings, pleasant  reading,  music,  joyful  and  helpful 
entertainment,  games — anything  to  make  noble  and 
happy  the  life  of  the  children,  and  to  make  mutual 
the  gladness  of  both  parents  and  children. 

These  snowstorms  ought  to  make  us  all  more 
charitable,  cheerful,  loving,  and  enthusiastic  at 
home.  A  woman  or  a  man  who  squanders  all  smiles 
and  pretty  words  and  compliments  and  capacity  to 
be  decent  away   from  home,   and  then  gives  all 


148    PATHS    TO    THE    CITY    OF    GOD 

groans  and  meanness,  bad  temper  and  irritability 
to  the  stock  in  trade  at  home,  is  of  all  human  beings 
most  despicable.  And  one  who  bows  and  scrapes 
and  flatters  and  lies  beautifully,  and  tells  stories  and 
eats  big  suppers  at  others'  expense,  and  don't  get 
mad  because  of  a  fear  of  being  disciplined,  away 
from  home,  in  business  or  society,  to  drive  a  sharp 
trade,  to  hold  a  place,  and  then  comes  home  to  be 
sour  and  crusty  and  out  of  humor  and  to  scold  about 
everything,  and  say  that  things  are  not  cooked  well, 
or  that  life  is  monotonous,  is  wickedly  destructive 
of  the  best  thing  on  earth.  To  a  family  which 
started  on  the  capital  of  a  couple  like  this,  I  can 
see  no  treasure  in  the  snow. 

The  winter  comes  apace.  That  was  the  threat 
he  gave  yesterday  morning.  He  will  drive  the 
children  in,  and  he  will  ask  you  to  make  your  home 
beautiful  and  help  some  others,  who  cannot  do  it 
alone,  to  make  their  homes  beautiful  also.  Do  not 
stand  away  off  from  your  children  in  dignified  cold- 
ness and  icy  solemnity,  and  have  them  look  at  you 
when  you  eat  apples  and  pop-corn  to  see  if  you 
really  swallowed  them.  Do  not  create  an  impassable 
barrier  between  them  and  you.  Let  the  snow  bring 
you  close  together.  Upon  that  impassable  bar- 
rier between  fathers  and  sons  and  mothers  and 
daughters,  the  strange  woman  walks;  the  saloon  is 
builded;  the  gambling-hell  is  founded,  and  the  soul 
is  often  wrecked.  Study  your  trade  or  calling  or 
profession,  but  study  also  the  ways  to  make  home 
a  heaven  on  earth.    We  visit  too  much  rather  than 


TREASURES    OF    THE    SNOW   149 

too  little.  Some  people,  I  know,  have  to  leave  home 
to  get  rid  of  themselves.  I  can  hardly  blame  them 
for  wanting  to  do  that.  But  it  is  only  a  very  poor 
or  lean  man  or  woman  who  cannot  entertain  himself, 
and  the  man  who  wants  to  leam  how  to  do  that 
would  better  try  it  at  home.  For  at  home  with 
magazines  and  books  a  man  must  prepare  himself 
for  society.  And  it  is  to  put  the  cart  before  the 
horse — to  prepare  in  society  to  live  at  home. 
Society  betrays  its  own  secret.  And  that  is,  that  too 
often  people  who  are  in  themselves  almost  nothing 
gather  together  to  learn  something  of  one  another. 
Zero  applies  to  zero.  The  entertainment  is  very 
suggestive. 

Beneath  the  state,  beneath  the  church,  beneath 
society,  let  us  not  think  that  the  work  of  home  can 
be,  in  anywise,  superseded  or  bargained  for.  Young 
Men's  and  Young  Women's  Christian  Associations, 
Sunday-School  teachers,  the  pastor — hard  as  they 
work — cannot  do  your  work  in  making  home  the 
best  place  on  earth  for  your  children  this  winter. 
As  the  snow  comes,  study  to  keep  them  there.  Play 
any  game  with  them  rather  than  have  them  play  it 
elsewhere.  It  is  better  to  play  anything  at  home 
with  your  boy  than  to  have  him  play  cards  in  a 
saloon.  I  should  take  it  as  quite  as  pious  work  as 
shouting  or  speaking  in  conference  meeting  to  play 
so  much  with  my  children  that  they  would  love  to 
play  with  me.  Many  are  poor.  No  ringing  pianos, 
nor  splendid  pictures,  nor  piles  of  magazines,  no  fine 
library  in  your  house.     It  would  be  very  discour- 


150    PATHS    TO    THE    CITY    OF    GOD 

aging  this  coming  winter  if  love  was  not  such  a 
wonderful  spirit  to  create  something  out  of  nothing; 
if  the  grandeur  of  a  holy  and  noble  life  in  the  midst 
of  privation  were  not  so  persuasive;  if  all  history 
were  not  filled  with  the  names  of  noble  men  and 
true  women  born  in  the  homes  of  poverty,  nursed 
at  its  breasts,  but  who  had  to  carry  forth  into  the 
world  from  beneath  thatched  roofs  and  narrow, 
unadorned  walls,  the  spirit  of  heroism,  the  enterprise 
of  goodness  and  the  stern  nobility  of  an  honest 
Christian  life.  Under  roofs  that  leaked  babies  slept 
beneath  thin  covering  which  now  and  then  was 
snowed  upon,  and  yet  there  grew  the  principles  of  a 
bearing,  suffering,  enduring  manhood.  Many  a 
profession  would  lose  its  brightest  name  if  the  homes 
of  the  poor  were  not  allowed  to  give  what  they  had 
to  civilization.  Many  a  calling  which  gathers 
together  its  successful  examples  from  houses  of 
wealth  and  places  of  glory  would  have  had  to  hunt 
up  the  lonely  dwellings  of  the  poor  to  have  found 
these  shining  illustrations,  years  ago.  Many  a  field 
of  battle  would  lack  its  whole  significance  if  some 
holy  poor  man's  home  had  not  spoken  through  the 
din,  and  many  a  stirring  hymn  of  liberty  or  faith 
had  never  been  written  had  not  some  poor  woman 
taught  the  young  singer  its  deepest  tones  in  poverty. 
America  will  love  the  homes  of  the  poor  so  long  as 
it  remembers  Abraham  Lincoln  or  Henry  Wilson. 
Theology  will  recollect  the  dwellings  of  the  lowly  so 
long  as  Martin  Luther  and  John  Wesley  are  not 
forgotten.    Poetry  will  twine  its  rich  laurels  for  the 


TREASURES    OF    THE    SNOW    151 

foreheads  of  those  who  made  the  humble  cottage 
give  a  Gerald  Massey  or  a  John  Bunyan,  and  all 
the  forces  of  civilization  will  stand  to  say  that  no 
home  is  so  poor  as  that  it  cannot  make  the  snow 
valuable  to  fire  its  love,  warm  its  purity,  and 
urge  its  nobility  into  great  human  life. 

The  threat  of  local  Mormonism  and  the  fact  of 
increasing  divorces,  the  gilded  dens  of  attractive 
vice,  the  methods  of  debased  society — all  urge  upon 
us  to  make  home  the  first  and  greatest  avenue  of 
our  influence  upon  the  world.  It  must  stand  between 
the  human  soul  and  the  waves  of  hell.  It  must 
gather  out  of  the  God-given  children  the  wealth  God 
has  sent  through  them  and  hand  it  to  the  angel  of 
the  future.  The  homes  of  America  are  the  looms 
which  weave  our  flags.  The  star-spangled  banner 
will  mean  just  what  the  homes  of  America  make  it 
m_ean.  The  best  political  work  you  can  do  is  to 
build  up  the  character  of  your  boy  that  he  will  be 
one  more  honest  voter  who  will  not  buy  or  be 
bought,  one  more  honest  thinker  who  will  not  be  his 
party's  slave,  one  more  true  soul  to  beat  back  error, 
one  more  right  man  to  hurl  back  the  hosts  of  wrong, 
one  more  man — every  inch  of  him — to  make  man- 
hood popular  and  to  make  sham  men  hide  their 
faces.  What  a  present  such  a  boy  at  twenty-one  is 
for  a  mother  to  give  to  her  country !  What  another 
grand  present  to  country,  church,  or  society  is  a 
young  woman  filled  with  ideas,  flushed  with  high 
hope,  yearning  for  great  endeavor,  and  guided  for 
the  right.     No  work  but  that  of  the  home  can 


152    PATHS    TO    THE    CITY    OF    GOD 

accomplish  either,  and  we  have  gained  the  treasure 
of  the  snow,  if,  while  it  keeps  us  in  our  homes,  we 
shall  learn  to  prize  them,  to  serve  them,  and,  through 
them,  to  serve  the  future. 

But  just  as  the  snow  which  falls  out  of  the 
realms  which  are  seen,  drives  us  in  from  our  exterior 
life  on  the  street  to  the  interior  life  of  our  homes,  so 
does  the  snow  of  trouble,  sorrow,  affliction,  disap- 
pointment— falling,  as  it  does,  out  of  realms  unseen 
— drive  us  from  the  spiritual  life  exterior  into  the 
spiritual  life  interior.  All  shallow  life  is  from 
without  in;  all  deep  life  is  from  within  out.  And 
so  men  who  live  they  know  not  why — and  nobody 
else  does — live  from  their  circumstances  without 
toward  their  life  within,  and  all  men  who  find  a 
reason  for  their  living — as  do  those  around  them — 
live  from  their  life  within  toward  and  upon  their 
circumstances  without.  The  one  is  the  slave  of  his 
circumstances,  the  other  is  master.  And  one  of  the 
obvious  achievements  of  trouble  as  an  influence  upon 
men  is  that  it  drives  men  into  themselves  and  makes 
them  live  or  die  on  the  interior  life.  This  is  the 
treasure  of  the  snow  of  sorrow,  and  into  it  many 
have  entered.  You  never  knew  how  lean  and  sadly 
poor  your  inside  life  was  until  trouble  from  the 
outside  made  it  impossible  for  you  to  live  from  the 
outside  by  cutting  off  all  your  supplies  and  making 
it  necessary  for  you  to  live  from  within  your  own 
nature.  If  you  found  any  comforting  thought  with- 
in— snowbound  as  you  were — how  you  prized  it. 
It  was  like  a  loaf  of  bread  which  some  snow-bound 


TREASURES    OF    THE    SNOW    153 

hunter  found  in  his  cabin.  If  there  was  a  pile  of 
ideas,  which  you  had  kept  and  which  gave  you  a 
fire  when  hghted  up  by  some  newly-discovered 
match  of  sentiment,  how  you  loved  them.  The 
snow-bound  soul  had  found  enough  wherewith  to 
make  a  blazing  fire,  and  it  warmed  itself  by  the  heat. 
If  you  found  some  water  to  quench  your  thirst,  how 
fresh  it  seemed.  It  is  the  story  of  any  affliction — 
the  snow  of  trouble  drives  us  into  ourselves  and  we 
find  out  who  we  are  and  what  we  are.  Nobody  can 
get  to  you.  The  snowdrift  has  hid  you  and  them. 
You  can  hear  them  talk,  but  you  cannot  distinguish 
what  they  say.  You  have  to  draw  from  the  inside. 
How  many  dear  souls  which  I  have  tried  to  comfort 
have  had  this  same  sad,  but,  after  all,  helpful 
experience.  I  have  felt  that  I  could  not  get  to  you, 
that  only  by  seeing  God  interiorly  and  not  hearing 
my  footsteps  from  the  exterior  could  you  be  helped. 
Such  is  the  individual,  or  rather,  personal  nature  of 
sorrow  that  its  snows  hide  all  help  from  the  outside, 
and  its  grand  but  severe  mission  is  to  help  a  man 
to  find  within  him  something  of  consolation.  And 
it  is  the  glory  of  an  unseen  Jesus  and  a  life  "hid  with 
Christ  in  God"  that  it  stands  within  its  low  cottage, 
all  covered  with  snow,  and  draws  from  its  own  life, 
rooted  in  Infinite  Life,  the  consolations  of  God. 
No  other  life  can  suffice  for  life's  conflicts  and 
experiences.  No  life  drawn  from  the  wealth  of  the 
world  outside  of  you,  from  culture  by  books  or  art, 
from  the  music  that  plays  its  way  into  your  ear — 
only  the  life  within,  made  rich  and  deep  through 


154    PATHS    TO    THE    CITY    OF    GOD 

its  rootedness  in  God's  life,  can  make  the  snowstorm 
beautiful  or  the  shrill  wind  musical. 

For  it  is  life's  rule,  everywhere,  that  there  is  just 
as  much  in  a  snowstorm  on  the  outside  as  we  lend 
to  it  of  interior  significance  from  the  inside.  Our 
experiences  are  measured  up  by  our  intuitive  life. 
It  was  the  greatness  of  Ruskin  from  within  which 
gave  feature  and  meaning  to  the  clouds  and  rain 
without,  and  you  can  read  the  autobiography  of 
Bryant  in  the  poems  he  wrote  wherewith  to  describe 
outer  things.  All  great — all  real  human  life  is  from 
within  outward.  It  is  the  unrolling  of  the  nature  of 
an  acorn  that  swings  its  branches  in  the  heavens  and 
holds  with  fimi  root  on  this  planet's  heart.  Out  of 
the  interior  life  come  all  the  nations,  the  arts, 
literature,  and  sciences.  And  whatever  drives  man 
in  upon  himself  is  helpful  to  human  self-discovery. 
Civilization  is  the  race's  discovery  of  itself  written 
out.  So  it  is  that  the  deepest  music  has  been  born 
in  deepest  suffering,  as  "it  is  only  the  crushed  grape 
that  gives  the  blood-red  wine."  Around  the  doors 
of  the  greatest  poets  have  played  the  snowstorms. 
They  have  been  driven  in ;  and,  when  the  storm  was 
past,  they  have  come  out  bearing  human  nature  in 
their  hand.  "Pilgrim's  Progress,"  what  is  it?  The 
story  of  the  soul.  It  was  read  from  within  out  by 
John  Bunyan  when  the  snow  of  prison  life  forced 
him  to  acquaint  himself  with  his  own  nature, 
Dante's  "Inferno" — another  phase  of  human  nature 
— comes  out  of  the  snow-bound,  troubled  spirit  of 
the  poet.     Modern  civilization  has  come  out  of  the 


TREASURES    OF    THE    SNOW    155 

snowstorm  of  the  Middle  Ages  and  French  Revolu- 
tion, and  all  great  life  has  been  human  self-discovery. 
Martin  Luther  found  the  rights  of  conscience, 
Clarkson  found  the  love  of  freedom,  and  Livingstone 
found  the  brotherhood  of  man  within  snow-bound 
souls.  To  the  interior  life  of  every  John  every  angel 
says,  "Write." 

So  it  must  ever  be  with  trouble — its  mission  is 
to  help  you  to  find  yourself.  Every  man  has  a  gift 
to  bring  to  the  race.  He  hunts  for  it  in  other  people. 
Sorrow  helps  him  to  find  it  within  himself.  Our  age 
is  so  apt  to  live  from  without  in,  that  this  truth 
ought  to  be  emphasized.  Before  the  race  stands  the 
Lord  Christ,  of  infinite  proportions,  and  His  name 
bears  no  better  lesson  than  the  fact  that  "man  does 
not  live  by  bread  alone,  but  by  every  word  which 
cometh  out  of  his  mouth."  He  was  always  forcing 
the  life  within  Him  upon  the  world  without. 
He  was  always  saying,  "I  have  meat  to  eat  that  ye 
know  not  of."  He  always  glorified  the  life  within. 
And  He  was  made  "perfect  through  suffering." 
Greatest  snowstorms  beating  upon  Him  made  Him 
say :  "I  and  my  Father  are  one,"  and  thus  He  became 
the  "captain  of  our  salvation." 

The  winter  has  announced  itself  as  the  explana- 
tion of  the  meaning  of  the  summer-time.  Farmers 
discover  by  spring  just  how  this  work  during  the 
months  of  planting  and  tending  and  harvest  is  to  be 
valued.  All  these  summer  months  have  been 
beautiful,  bright,  and  long,  that  in  the  winter  we 
may  not  starve  but  have  good  cheer.    Are  you  ready 


156    PATHS    TO    THE    CITY    OF    GOD 

for  the  blasts  and  snows?  Is  your  crop  carefully 
harvested  ?  Was  it  well  tended  ?  Ah,  did  you  plant 
well  and  sufficiently  ? 

Why  do  I  ask  these  questions?  That  I  may  ask 
you,  who  are  now  yet  so  far  from  the  winter  of 
trouble,  affliction,  and  death,  if  you  have  prepared,  or 
are  preparing  now,  for  the  cold  and  the  storm.  The 
snow  crystals  are  beautiful,  but  not  to  a  hungry 
man.  The  icicles  hang  as  frozen  silver,  but  not  to 
a  man  who  has  no  bread  to  eat.  The  storm  is  an 
epic  poem  of  the  winds  and  the  world,  but  not  to  a 
man  who  has  no  summer  saved  up  wherewith  to 
conquer  and  lead  old  winter  captive.  It  will  not 
entertain  you  to  put  into  the  microscope  of  thought 
your  snow  of  trouble  and  look  at  its  prisms  unless 
you  have  some  interior  life  to  help  you  bear  it  and 
understand  it.  It  will  be  sad  work  for  you  to  look 
at  the  cold  flakes  of  affliction  if  your  snow-bound 
spirit  starves.  The  summer  is  going.  Some  of  us 
have  sowed  nothing;  others  are  not  tending  what 
we  did  sow;  others  are  not  careful  to  harvest.  In 
this  sublime  agriculture  of  God  and  heaven,  it  is 
certain  that  to  those  who  are  snow-bound  with  care 
and  suffering  and  temptation,  who  have  labored 
and  gained  a  life  within,  rooted  in  God,  through 
Christ,  there  shall  be  nothing  but  peace,  and  when 
death  builds  the  white  walls  about  them  they  shall 
sit  by  the  great,  burning  love  of  God  and  warm  their 
tired  natures  and  rest,  till  the  spring-time  come,  and 
the  birds  of  heaven  carol  the  songs  of  a  snowless, 
stormless,  sinless  heaven. 


VIII 

THE    PERSONAL   ELEMENT   IN 
CHRISTIANITY 

"  Somebody  hath  touched  Me,  for  I  perceive  that  virtue 
hath  gone  out  of  Me."    St.  Luke  viii.  46. 

THESE  are  the  words  of  our  Lord  at  a  char- 
acteristic moment  in  His  early  career.  He 
was  on  His  way  to  rescue  the  daughter  of  the 
ruler  of  the  synagogue  from  the  grasp  of  death, 
when  this  other  pleading,  yet  silent,  need  pressed 
itself  upon  His  abundant  grace.  In  the  crowd  which 
thronged  around  Him,  following  on  with  ardent 
curiosity  from  the  feast  where  Jesus  had  listened 
to  this  father's  sorrow,  toward  the  house  of  death, 
there  was  this  lone  woman.  Life's  sorrows  dread- 
fully emphasize  one's  individuality.  She  was 
suffering  with  a  malady  which  exiled  her  from 
society  and  marked  her,  to  some  of  them,  as  a  child 
of  infamy.  Twelve  years  of  secret  agony  and  public 
shame  had  made  her  prize  the  possibilities  of  this 
moment.  O  how  quick  is  the  hearing  to  discover 
even  a  rumor  that  the  real  Christ  is  in  the  neighbor- 
hood !  Many  physicians  had  added  to  her  poverty 
a  certain  desperate  power,  which  pushed  her  through 
the  crowd  and  nerved  her  hand  to  touch  the  border 
of  His  flowing  robe.    Only  Christ's  power  and  love 

157 


158    PATHS    TO    THE    CITY    OF    GOD 

are  equal  to  our  desperation  and  faith.  Perhaps  it 
was  the  bkie  ribbon,  which  was  a  symbol  of  His 
holiness,  which  she  had  touched  with  her  defilement, 
as  the  sufferer  with  secret  trembling  hid  herself  away 
in  the  crowd.  With  a  crowd's  dullness  of  appre- 
hension it  pressed  on,  as  though  no  event  of  pro- 
foundest  significance  to  her  and  to  Jesus  Christ  had 
occurred.  But  He,  whose  religion  then  and  there 
disclosed  one  of  its  noblest  characteristics,  stopped 
that  current  of  miscellaneous  human  life,  to  deal  with 
its  most  unnoticed  drop,  when  Pie  said :  "Who 
touched  Me?"  Peter,  himself  for  the  moment  the 
victim  of  the  crowd's  gregariousness,  having  lost 
sight  of  his  own  personality  and  being  unable  to 
perceive  the  personalities  of  others  in  that  throng, 
which  had  but  a  dull  individuality  of  its  own,  said : 
"Master,  the  multitude  throng  Thee  and  press  Thee, 
and  sayest  Thou,  'Who  touched  me?'  "  Then  said 
Jesus,  in  the  words  of  our  text,  "Somebody  hath 
touched  Me,  for  I  perceive  that  virtue  hath  gone  out 
of  Me." 

I  want  to  speak  to  you,  at  this  time,  about  the 
personal  element  in  Christianity.  And  of  course, 
the  text  which  I  have  chosen  has  its  profoundest 
interpretation,  as  it  is  studied  in  that  atmosphere 
which  was  created  by  Him  who  spoke  it — an  atmos- 
phere which  we  must  all  agree  made  it  possible  for 
the  first  time  in  human  history  for  man  to  think  or 
speak  with  adequate  intelligence  of  himself  as  a 
personal  being.  Not  that  other  ages  had  not  talked 
about  man  as  a  person,  in  every  Plato  and  in  every 


THE    PERSONAL    ELEMENT     159 

Job,  but  with  no  logical  basis,  until  Christ,  except 
a  strong  and  prophetic  soul  like  Moses,  with  the  "I 
am  that  I  am,"  had  any  seer  or  philosopher  given  to 
man  that  deeper  self-respect  which  in  the  centers  of 
his  being  he  had  always  dreamed  was  his.  As  com- 
pared with  the  pantheism  of  the  Orient,  which  pre- 
cluded at  once  the  personality  of  God  and  of  man, 
every  theistic  vision  of  Hebrew  or  Greek  had  rescued 
man  by  its  apprehension  of  a  personal  God;  and 
when  the  Hebrew  mind,  in  Isaiah,  grew  vocal  with 
the  prophecy  of  the  Christ,  it  presented  a  self-respect- 
ful manhood,  whose  intense  personalness  is  its  last- 
ing charm.  The  prechristian  times  and  unchristian 
eras  betray  this  weakness  at  every  point.  An  invisi- 
ble honesty,  however,  pervades  them.  They  are  con- 
stantly seeing  men  in  the  herd,  and  finding  each  man 
to  be  one  of  the  multitude  whose  individual  self- 
hood is  distorted  by  a  thousand  influences  of  evil, 
limited  by  the  countless  forces  of  wrong  and  stunted 
by  the  oppression  of  sin.  They  dare  not  insist  upon 
that  self-determined  and  Divine  characteristic  of 
man  which  lies  in  all  the  appeals  and  blessings  of 
Christianity — namely,  his  personality.  Yet  the 
prophets  are  ever  rising  above  this  in  anticipation 
that  man  will  come  to  his  own.  Christianity  is 
Christ,  and  being  He,  it  treats  man  as  saved  in  Him. 
At  once,  a  human  being  is  a  personal  child  of  a 
personal  God.  Once  have  a  father — God  above  man 
— as  Jesus  saw  and  loved  Him — and  every  soul  is 
personal.  Christ  reveals  man,  at  the  same  instant 
in  which  He  reveals  God.    At  once,  every  man  ceases 


160    PATHS    TO    THE    CITY    OF    GOD 

to  be  merely  a  creature,  and  under  this  revealing  in- 
fluence, Himself  more  personal  than  any  other  in  the 
history  of  life — "the  creature  waiteth  for  the  mani- 
festation of  the  sons  of  God."  Man  is  himself — the 
self  he  was  meant  to  be,  the  self  which  his  deepest 
nature  says  in  all  the  literature  of  human  longings 
he  must  be,  in  the  Christ,  who,  to  the  souls 
once  awakened  by  Him,  is  thus  the  "first  born  of  the 
sons  of  God."  All  his  limitations  are  broken  down 
in  Christ;  all  the  tyrannous  and  belittling  influence 
of  sin  is  lost  in  the  liberty  wherewith  he  has  been  set 
free  in  a  law  of  love;  and  all  the  distortions  of  evil 
are  put  aside  in  the  straightforward  and  natural 
working  of  a  personal  goodness  in  Christ,  which,  by 
faith  and  through  grace,  becomes  his  own.  Christ 
has  made  him  a  personal  being;  and  looking  into 
his  own  nature,  and  seeing  what  God  made  him  to 
be,  the  intelligent  Christian  knows  that  he  can  never 
give  more  glory  to  God,  or  more  fitly  sound  the 
praise  of  the  great  salvation  than  when  he  can  say, 
"I  am  I.  Whatever  else  is  or  is  not,  I  am  I."  So 
it  is,  that  Jesus  begins  the  new  humanity  at  that 
central  point  in  human  consciousness  and  with  the 
restoration  of  that  basis  of  spiritual  on  which  all 
structures  of  character,  intellectual  and  moral,  must 
rest  for  evermore.  The  soul  has  found  friendship 
in  lofty  personal  relationships,  and  says :  "What  wilt 
Thou  have  me  to  do?" 

It  is  only  by  the  contagion  of  power  that  man 
becomes  powerful.  It  was  because  Christ  Himself 
was  seen  as  the  most  personal  being  in  earth  or 


THE    PERSONAL    ELEMENT    161 

heaven,  that  the  personalness  of  human  nature  ever 
was  or  can  be  roused.  His  overwhehning  sense  of 
personality  confuses  an  impersonal  soul  and  be- 
wilders an  impersonal  theology.  To  a  life  which 
lives  simply  by  obeying  abstract  truth  and  yields 
itself  simply  to  an  impersonal  manner  of  action.  He 
speaks  so  as  to  send  the  roots  of  all  spiritual  exist- 
ence deeper  than  the  intellect  into  the  sensibilities 
and  will  by  saying,  "/  am  the  truth."  '7  am  the 
way."  To  a  soul  which  has  listened  to  His  words 
at  second-hand,  and  is  seeking  to  live  so  that  every 
death  in  all  its  realms  shall  somehow  break  with 
life,  He  speaks,  so  that  mental  calculations  vanish 
and  labored  reasonings  hide  in  the  uttered  fact:  '7 
am  the  resurrection  and  the  life."  And  thus,  when 
He  comes  to  the  soul's  love,  many  a  well-meaning 
and  hard-worked  religionist  wakes  up  to  find  that 
the  supreme  vitality  of  Christianity  has  been  hitherto 
missed.  He  has  led  an  impersonal  Christian  life, 
because  he  has  known  nothing  else  but  impersonal 
truth  or  impersonal  hope.  And  Christian  theology, 
coming  upon  better  days,  finds  how  here  and  there 
and  only  by  rare  personalities  has  it  been  delivered, 
as  it  shall  be  still  more  truly  delivered  from  the 
abstract,  by  the  concrete  personality  of  God  in  Jesus 
Christ.  The  driest  of  Greek  intellects  says  to-day: 
"Sirs,  we  would  see  Jesus." 

Every  characteristic  of  the  Christ  is  illuminated 
in  the  glory  of  this.  The  personalness  of  the  God  He 
revealed,  the  personalness  of  Himself  as  God's  self- 
manifestation,  the  personalness  of  every  redeemed 


162    PATHS    TO    THE    CITY    OF    GOD 

soul  and  the  vision  of  human  society,  not  a  herd,  not 
a  multitude  in  whose  discordant  noise  every  man's 
particular  yearning  should  be  lost,  in  whose  general 
but  blind  devotion  to  truth  or  religion  every  man's 
special  ignorance  should  go  untaught,  every  man's 
individual  sin  should  go  unforgiven — but  this,  His 
vision  of  society  where,  instead,  every  man's  weak- 
ness should  be  seen  and  felt  by  the  crowd,  socially 
bound  together  in  sympathy,  and  most  of  all  by 
Himself  to  be  the  weakness  of  all,  where  nothing 
should  be  so  sacred  as  the  one  who  needs  healing, 
where  the  meaningless  clamor  of  the  throng  should 
be  still  in  the  cry  of  the  most  solitary,  and  where  at 
last  the  power  of  the  whole  would  be  the  sum  of 
contributed  personal  power.  These  are  latent  in  His 
religion,  and  manifest  in  all  its  triumphs. 

There  is  no  more  suggestive  instance  of  how  this 
element  in  Christianity  is  supreme  than  this  inci- 
dent in  the  life  of  Jesus.  Here  we  have  the  facts 
of  the  restoration  of  personality  through  Jesus 
Christ.  For  twelve  wretched  years  that  woman  had 
been  in  abnormal  and  sundered  relations  to  herself, 
to  society,  to  nature,  and  to  God.  It  was  unnatural 
that  her  life  should  thus  wear  its  long  years  away. 
She  was  not  what  she  was  meant  to  be,  and  her 
whole  existence  was  missing  its  end.  At  best,  her 
personality  was  incomplete,  and  through  its  very 
incompleteness  she  had  the  constitution  of  the  world 
against  her.  She  was  only  a  lonely  individual.  The 
laws  which  traversed  her  being  hung  like  burdens 
upon  her;  the  humanity  which  was  left  was  all  mean' 


THE    PERSONAL    ELEMENT    163 

ingless  and  even  grievous.  She  was  not  of  society 
or  of  progress,  without  that  which  would  make  her 
the  person  she  was  created  to  be.  That  incomplete- 
ness did  Christ  complete;  that  sorrowful  fragment  of 
a  human  personality  was  made  whole.  So  organic 
is  this  element  in  the  work  of  Christ  in  the  world, 
that  every  incident  or  method  of  its  operation  makes 
it  plain.  The  method  of  her  approach  and,  at  last, 
of  her  contact  with  Christ,  and  notably  His  dis- 
covery of  her,  from  the  depths  of  His  personality, 
make  it  still  more  evident.  Possibly,  she  had  been 
pushed  against  Him  before  as  the  crowd  rushed 
along,  but  she  had  not  been  cured,  nor  had  He 
spoken.  Certainly,  as  Peter  suggested,  that  jostling 
multitude  had  so  behaved  itself  that  it  seemed 
strange  enough  that  Jesus  should  ask,  "Who  touched 
Me?"  Others — sinners,  doubtless,  and  perhaps  as 
needy  as  she — had  pressed  against  that  same  spot 
in  His  garment,  and  yet  we  read  of  no  other  cure, 
nor  concerning  any  other  did  He  speak  as  He 
journeyed  along.  But  when  this  needy  woman  in  the 
courageous  assertion  of  her  possible  and  complete 
personality  in  Him,  strained  her  last  power  and 
reached  through  the  impersonalness  of  those  men 
and  women,  and  by  a  finger  in  whose  sensitive  yearn- 
ing the  whole  roused  personal  history  of  those  suffer- 
ing years  throbbed — when  she  touched  His  personal 
life,  clad  and  hidden  as  it  was — the  unseen  laws 
which  centered  in  Him  bore  her  impulsive  faith 
to  the  depths  of  His  soul,  and  in  that  dull-eyed  and 
insensate    crowd    He    stopped,    turned    back    the 


164    PATHS    TO    THE    CITY    OF    GOD 

thoughtless  impersonalness  of  its  movement,  and 
said :  "Who  touched  Me  ?"  Why,  the  crowd,  doubt- 
less, a  hundred  times,  thought  Peter;  and  so  he  said. 
But  Jesus,  true  to  the  personal  religion  of  God  and 
man,  said,  '^Somebody" — some  special  human  being 
— ''Somebody  hath  touched  Me." 

It  is  evident  from  this  and  from  other  incidents 
in  the  life  of  Jesus,  that  pro  founder  than  any  in  His 
day,  and  profounder  than  ours  in  this  day,  was 
His  conception  of  the  value  of  man  as  man — a 
personal  being.  Men  have  always  been  beset  with 
two  dangers — the  danger  on  the  one  side  of  over- 
valuing the  individual,  and  on  the  other  of  over- 
valuing the  multitude.  The  conception  of  man 
which  He  had,  who  came  to  save  man,  is  free  from 
either  danger.  Jesus  Christ  valued  man,  because 
he  was  by  nature  a  child  of  God,  created  for  sonship. 
Men  at  times  have  looked  at  a  man  as  a  citizen  and 
unconsciously  inferred  his  personality  from  his 
capacity  for  being  governed  from  without.  Jesus 
always  saw  that  man's  value  as  a  citizen,  or  what- 
ever else,  lay  in  the  fact  of  his  essential  sonship  unto 
God.  He  must  be  governed  only  by  what  gains  the 
citadel  of  his  personality — his  own  loyal  will — by 
and  through  reason  and  conscience  and  love.  He  is 
ever  appealing  to  the  person  within  the  citizen. 
Deeper  than  his  belongings  unto  himself,  or  to  other 
men,  are  a  man's  belongings  unto  God.  And  so  the 
whole  philosophy  of  progress  under  Christianity  is 
built  on  the  conception  which  lies  in  this  incident. 
Not  that  impersonal  crowd,  but  that  personal  woman 


THE    PERSONAL    ELEMENT    165 

— needy  and  self-respectful,  in  the  assertion  of  her 
possible  personality  in  Him — she  was  the  force  with 
which  He  worked.  He  treated  her  as  He  treated 
the  woman  of  Samaria.  He  asks  no  greater  audi- 
ence than  one  soul,  for  His  greatest  eloquence.  She 
had  not  forgotten  herself  in  the  forgetfulness  of  the 
throng — and  the  desire  of  that  one  self-respecting 
personality,  though  as  yet  unassured,  rose  up  out 
of  their  din  like  a  strain  of  music.  O  how  welcome 
it  was  to  His  finer  ears !  "Somebody  hath  touched 
Me,"  He  said. 

In  the  vast  movement,  which  we  call  civilization, 
men  and  women  repeat  the  history  of  this  moving 
throng,  with  this  one  redeemed  life.  While  it  is 
well  to  protest  against  individualism,  it  is  also  well 
to  understand  and  protest  against  the  resistless 
tyranny  of  the  throng.  I  am  not  speaking  to  you, 
to-day,  of  the  throng  of  Pharisees  and  Scribes, 
scoffers  and  evil-doers  who  stay  behind  and  have  no 
interest  in  Christ,  but  of  that  throng  of  good  pious 
people  who  call  themselves  Christian  which  aim- 
lessly and  blindly  are  led  on,  and  even  with  much 
blessing  to  themselves,  yet  without  ever  seizing  the 
loftier  grace  which  His  life  has  to  give.  There  is 
something  better  than  the  good  and  this  it  is — 
Christ's  personal  friendship  with  you.  It  is  safe  to 
say  that  the  world's  life,  as  a  whole,  is  tending 
Christwards.  The  world  of  thought  and  life  has  seen 
Him  at  the  feast,in  literature,  art,  music,  and  historic 
event.  The  public  was  never  more  interested  in  Him 
as  a  real  power  in  sociology  and  the  development  of 


166    PATHS    TO    THE    CITY    OF    GOD 

man's  idealism.  Some  ruling  soul  has  spoken  of 
some  need  away  yonder  in  the  years  to  come,  and  by 
the  eye  of  a  William  of  Orange,  or  a  Wilberforce, 
or  a  Tolstoy,  man  has  seen  Christ,  in  historic  move- 
ment, start  to  the  accomplishment  of  that  Divine 
task.  Socialism  claims  Him  and  the  multitude  of 
the  restless  and  discontented  are  running  after  Him. 
On,  with  the  revolving  years,  and  the  energies  of 
Christianity,  we  go,  treading  one  another  down  in 
our  noisy  argument  or  belief  about  Christ,  clamorous 
in  our  eloquence  concerning  the  blessings  of  His 
golden-rule  vision  of  progress,  and  all  too  ready  to 
go  into  the  defense  of  the  general  faith.  Yet  tliat 
whole  multitude,  when  we  think  of  it,  is  an  imper- 
sonal thing — almost  a  mob.  It  worships  what  it 
calls  organization.  The  mass  hardens.  It  is  cruel 
to  the  weak;  it  is  barbarous  to  the  minority;  it  is 
murderous  to  the  needy;  and  it  is  without  a  con- 
science in  its  hours  of  panic.  It  is  never  quite  a  grand 
army  which  follows  a  royal  Captain,  even  in  its 
hours  of  peace.  It  is  more  often  a  great  medley  of 
sutlers  and  camp-followers.  At  its  best,  the  terrible 
thing  about  it  is  that  well-meaning  men  lose  their 
personalities  in  this  grand  throng.  They  are  sub- 
merged in  the  flood  of  humanity,  and  become  as 
impersonal  as  the  crowd.  Even  now  the  state  is 
appealed  to  by  a  new  set  of  reformers  to  attend  to 
each  of  us  by  becoming  all  of  us. 

Much  of  our  religiousness  is  just  that  impersonal 
movement  which  each  of  us  may  have  obtained  by 
moving  on  with  a  glorious  race.    Now  and  then  by 


THE    PERSONAL    ELEMENT    167 

our  side  in  life,  some  outreached  hand  is  pushed 
by  us,  and  the  garment  of  Christ  is  touched,  and  we 
are  amazed  to  see  the  personal  attention  which  He 
seems  to  bestow  upon  some  soul  that  ever  afterwards 
has  a  nearness  to  Him,  a  nobility  of  life,  a  self- 
respectful  manhood,  which  we  do  not  know  or 
possess.  Ah!  the  lonely  man  next  to  us,  who  does 
not  know  of  historic  movements,  has  personally 
remembered  that  men  are  not  saved  in  crowds,  or 
by  nations  and  charters,  but  by  a  personal  touch 
upon  the  garment  of  a  personal  Christ.  More  pro- 
foundly even  than  the  generally  lauded  blessings  of 
Christian  civilization  does  his  need  stir  him.  In  that 
mass  of  humanity,  he  alone  is  truly  saved.  This 
woman  might  have  contented  herself  in  that  on- 
going multitude,  with  that  general  forgetfulness  of 
self,  which  comes  to  people  in  a  crowd,  with  that 
loss  of  definite  self-consciousness  which  makes  a 
thousand  people  oftentimes  seem  like  one  bewildered 
man;  or  she  might  have  said  to  her  sorrow  that  it 
was  no  time  in  which  to  approach  Christ,  and  that 
so  engrossed  must  be  His  attention  with  the  throng, 
that  He  would  not  have  time  to  attend  to  her.  But 
sometimes,  somebody  is  wiser  than  everybody, 
though  it  be  true  that  everybody  is  wiser  than  just 
anybody.  My  friends,  the  struggle  against  evil 
of  all  sorts,  which  at  root  is  a  struggle  for  a  person- 
ality, does  not  stop  with  such  reasoning  as  will  fail 
of  courage  or  faith,  nor  when  it  is  in  earnest,  and 
born  from  a  sense  of  need,  does  it  lose  its  definite- 
ness  of  aim;    but  it  presses  through  all  that  is  before 


168    PATHS    TO    THE    CITY    OF    GOD 

it,  with  a  roused  sense  of  possible  personality  which 
attracts  it  beyond.  And  Christ  Jesus  is  constantly, 
in  the  movement  of  history,  showing  how  valueless 
are  crowds,  in  comparison  with  a  single  earnest 
soul.  He  had  just  left  the  feast  to  save  one  human 
being,  and  was  on  His  way  to  her.  Jostling  against 
Him  in  that  faithless  and  impersonal  way,  what  had 
they  received?  Touching  His  garment  in  the  per- 
sonalness  of  her  want,  this  woman  had  been  made 
whole. 

Society  is  full  of  good-hearted  and  high-minded 
people,  who  learn  not  the  wisdom  of  this  woman. 
Men  are  crowding  about  Jesus,  while  He  marches  on 
to  do  a  miracle  for  somebody  else,  all  forgetful  of 
their  own  personal  disorders.  We  believe  in  Christ 
because  there  is  the  "witness  of  History  to  Christ ;" 
and  we  forget,  that,  in  so  far  as  history  has  any 
real  witness  at  all  to  Him,  it  is  because  some  souls 
have  pushed  through  and  personally  touched  in  the 
press  behind  the  hem  of  His  garment.  Men  rear 
beautiful  families,  make  fortunes  and  fame,  create 
vast  enterprises,  and  achieve  great  ends  in  literature 
and  government,  because  of  the  presence  of  Christ 
in  the  world.  In  an  impersonal  way,  they  touch 
Him  in  the  hurry  and  throng  of  life,  and  not  once 
do  they  remember  how  much  more  deeply  do  they 
need  Him  than  this.  We  over-estimate  the  worth  of 
the  general  influence  of  Christ  on  society  and 
government,  only  when  we  forget  to  make  all- 
important  the  special  influence  of  Him  personally 
upon  you  and  me. 


THE    PERSONAL    ELEMENT    169 

Never  until  each  private  personality  is  re-created 
or  restored,  can  the  crowd — the  nation — the  church, 
the  social  fabric  be  anything  but  a  sad  sight.  No 
wonder  is  it  that  Jesus  was  touched  at  the  appear- 
ance of  the  multitude.  He  saw  into  it,  and  through 
its  false  strength.  Every  man,  as  He  saw  him, 
needed  a  personal  salvation,  that,  for  his  own  sake 
and  for  that  of  the  crowd,  he  might  be  and  live  a 
sacred,  self-respectful,  personal  life,  making  his  con- 
tribution to  the  general  store  of  good.  All  our 
failures  lie  in  our  low  conception  of  the  supreme 
importance  of  each  man  or  woman  as  a  personal 
being.  We  have  an  unconscious  and  yet  quite 
superstitious  estimate  of  the  throng — the  mass.  Our 
politics  will  have  a  deeper  statesmanship  when  we 
fully  realize  that  like  the  Sabbath,  government  is  for 
man  and  not  man  for  the  government;  that,  there- 
fore, a  nation's  usefulness  must  be  valued  by  how 
far  it  builds  up  a  strong  personality  in  each  citizen; 
that  no  really  true  manhood  and  womanhood  can 
come  by  any  impersonal  contact  even  with  great 
principles,  but  rather  by  a  personal  loyalty  too 
thoughtful  to  reverence  a  majority  and  intelligent 
enough  to  reach  the  hand  of  need  through  a  multi- 
tude and  to  touch  the  garment  hem  of  personal 
power.  A  man  is  so  likely  to  be  lost  in  the  life  of 
society  or  of  a  nation  and  so  lost  that  he  cannot 
serve  it  at  all.  That  woman  in  that  throng  was  the 
revealer  of  the  possibilities  of  their  natures  in  Jesus 
and  of  the  real  Christ  to  them,  whom  so  dimly  they 
had  apprehended.     Their  curious  admiration  was 


170    PATHS    TO    THE    CITY    OF    GOD 

broken  into  by  her  personal  devotion.  It  was  a 
grand  thing  to  be  saved  and  a  grand  thing  to  break 
up  the  unanimity  of  that  herd.  So  every  true  man 
serves  his  time  or  country.  The  Christ  gives  a 
blessing  from  out  His  nature  only  when  He  can  say 
"Somebody" — some  particular  human  soul — "has 
touched  me,"  When  some  soul  is  converted  or 
when  a  Nehemiah,  or  a  John  of  Barneveldt,  un- 
swayed into  that  blundering  harmony  with  an 
impersonal  and  thoughtless  age,  reaches  through  its 
dullness  and  clamor  and  actually  touches  this 
supreme  motive  power  of  history,  then,  to  the  crowd, 
Christ  becomes  known.  The  hope  for  the  mass  lies 
in  the  weakest  who  would  have  some  personal  con- 
tact with  Him,  against  whom  it  so  ignorantly 
crowds.  That  one  often  saves  the  herd  from  its 
gregariousness  and  breaks  up  effete  society,  or  an 
antiquated  government,  for  new  combinations,  each 
of  which,  gaining  a  little  more  of  the  personal 
element  for  the  new  solution,  makes  a  new  era  for 
mankind.  In  the  life  of  man,  as  well  as  in  the  life  of 
the  private  soul,  therefore,  the  personal  element  is 
the  supreme  integer, 

"But,"  you  say,  "is  not  this  breaking  up  of  the 
multitude,  by  the  assertion  each  of  himself  and  his 
needs,  simply  to  create  a  dangerous  individualism?" 
It  would  be  so,  my  friends,  were  it  not  for  the  per- 
sonal Christ.  Nothing  can  ever  break  up  the  tyr- 
anny of  institutionalism  and  divide  asunder  the 
powers  of  the  mass  but  that  supreme  personal  power 
which  discovers  to  every  separate  soul  what  its  true 


THE    PERSONAL    ELEMENT    171 

personality  is.  The  worth  of  each  soul  lies  at  the 
basis  of  a  true  commonwealth.  As  Jesus  Christ  was 
and  is  the  most  personal,  but  the  least  individual  of 
all  the  forces  of  history,  the  most  centripetal,  the 
least  centrifugal,  the  most  cohesive,  the  least  expul- 
sive and  eccentric  of  personal  powers  in  the  history 
of  civilization,  so  every  soul  will  avoid  the  danger 
of  individualism  in  the  restoration  of  its  personality 
in  Him.  There  is  this  practical  and  profound 
distinction  between  an  individual  and  a  person. 
This  woman,  before  her  cure,  although  she  trod 
along  with  the  multitude,  was  intensely  individual — 
she  was  individualized  from  everybody  else  in  the 
throng.  When  she  was  cured  she  became  a  person — 
that  which  so  deeply  separated  her  was  converted 
into  what  bound  her  to  them  with  a  thousand  deep 
and  natural  sympathies,  which  they  did  not  see.  She 
had  regained  her  lost  personal  life.  She  became  her 
real  self.  Then  her  existence  answered  to  itself. 
Restored  functions  and  a  complete  womanhood  had 
come.  She  was  made  what  she  was  intended  to  be 
in  Jesus  Christ.  Sin  is  the  very  triumph  of  individ- 
ualism. To  come  to  Christ  is  to  regain  one's 
personality — simply  ''to  be  made  whole."  And,  in 
the  life  of  humanity,  it  is  the  only  real  safety  to  the 
multitude,  with  which  one  goes  along,  and  to  one's 
self,  to  stand  against  it  in  the  personalness  of  a 
personal  Christ.  This  new  gift  of  your  true  self  to 
you  will  not  separate  them  from  you — no !  no !  other 
human  beings  will  be  nearer  to  you  and  your 
sympathies  than  ever  before,  and,  better  than  all, 


172    PATHS    TO    THE    CITY    OF    GOD 

they  will  be  nearer  In  their  own  knowledge  to  Christ. 
Ours  it  is  ever  to  thus  save  ourselves  and  others 
from  that  constant  but  silent  oppression  of  a  clam- 
orous crowd,  which  drowns  our  voices  and  bewilders 
our  souls,  blinding  them  to  their  need  and  to  their 
privilege,  and  at  the  same  moment  and  by  the  same 
Christ  to  save  ourselves  and  others  from  dividing 
the  force  of  a  moving  race,  and  from  beginning  that 
wrecking  process  of  individualism  which  threatens 
a  like  disaster. 

So  much  then  for  the  personal  element  in 
Christianity  so  far  as  its  happy  beneficiaries  are  con- 
cerned. Let  us  finally  consider  the  source  of  this 
new  power  which  we  have  found  in  the  renewed  and 
inspired  human  soul;  and  let  us  note  how  naturally  it 
comes  from  the  divine  Christ  into  man,  to  perform 
its  miracles  of  grace  in  all  the  realms  of  his  life, 

"Somebody  hath  touched  Me,"  said  the  Christ, 
"for  I  perceive  that  virtue  has  gone  out  of  Me." 
This,  then,  was  the  testimony  of  His  own  nature  that 
something  more  important  than  the  contact  of  the 
throng  with  His  garment  had  occurred.  This  was 
the  proof  that  some  receptive  and  yearning  nature 
had  opened  to  receive  this  personal  energy,  that 
virtue  had  gone  out  from  Him.  It  was  personality 
responding  to  personality;  and,  as  the  power  of  that 
incarnate  omnipotence  hurried  into  the  vacant  life  of 
the  weak  woman,  there  was  given  unto  men  a 
glimpse  of  the  operation  of  one  of  the  forces  in  that 
atonement,  which,  from  the  foundation  of  the  world, 
the  Christ  of  God  has  been  making  between  the 


THE    PERSONAL    ELEMENT    173 

omnipotence  of  God  and  the  impotence  of  man.  The 
energy  in  the  world's  history  which  has  operated 
to  restore  the  lost  personality  in  any  human  soul  is 
the  virtue  which  has  gone  out  of  Jesus  of  Nazareth — 
the  Christ  of  God — in  moments,  when,  through  the 
press  of  men  and  things  behind  Him,  that  shrinking 
soul  has  pushed  its  desperate  hand,  and,  hiding 
vainly,  has  heard,  in  the  deeps  of  its  life,  above  the 
tumult  of  a  crowd  which  has  pushed  itself  against 
Him,  at  every  moment,  the  words,  "Somebody  hath 
touched  Me,  for  I  perceive  that  power  has  gone  from 
Me."  It  is  a  very  inadequate  conception  of  man 
and  of  God  which  rests  in  its  vision  of  the  atoning 
grace  in  the  impersonal  truth,  or  the  impersonal  gen- 
eral influence  of  Christ  on  society.  Nothing  but  a 
personal  Saviour,  in  personal  relationship  with  the 
personal  human  spirit,  can  communicate  power.  In 
glad  substitution  of  His  abundant  power  for  our 
weakness,  of  His  Holiness  for  our  iniquity,  of  His 
loyalty  for  our  rebellion,  of  His  righteousness  for 
our  sin,  He  rouses  all  the  latent  capacity  we  have,  to 
hold  in  its  joyous  newness  of  life  a  righteousness 
not  our  own,  and  yet  altogether  our  own  by  the  first 
act  of  our  restored  personality;  and  He  begins 
within  us  a  new  life  of  personal  power,  a  life  which 
shall  continue  His  work,  as  we  follow  Him,  and  by 
the  same  laws  and  through  like  energies  urge  on  the 
reign  of  a  personal  God. 

And  thus  all  real  power  of  man  upon  or  for  man 
is  personal.  It  does  not  come  by  chance  or  without 
loss.    Whenever  any  human  being  has  truly  touched 


174.    PATHS    TO    THE    CITY    OF   GOD 

a  helpful  spirit  there  is  the  consciousness:  "Some- 
body hath  touched  me,  for  I  perceive  virtue  hath 
gone  out  of  me."  Real  virtue  of  mind,  or  heart,  is 
so  personal  that  even  no  generous  nature  fails  to 
know  the  cost  of  doing  helpful  and  inspiring  work 
in  the  world.  We  delude  ourselves  that  in  some  way 
unknown  to  us  and  unintelligible  to  them,  men  and 
women,  our  children,  will  get  the  most  vital  of  our 
energies  after  all,  and  we  need  not  be  so  sensitive 
about  the  contact  and  fonder  relationship  of  soul 
with  soul.  Your  boy  in  his  deepest  self  gets  from 
you  just  what  you  from  your  deepest  self  give  him. 
The  artist  must  put  himself  into  his  lines  and  colors, 
and  virtue  flows  out  of  him  whenever  he  lifts  men 
to  a  richer  personal  apprehension  of  beauty.  The 
real  orator  lives  and  goes  out  in  his  words,  and  only 
by  the  personal  self  he  puts  into  them,  whether  he 
whispers  or  shouts  them,  do  they  gain  propulsive 
movement.  There  is  no  such  noble  and  ennobling 
work  as  moving  somebody.  We  have  a  wretchedly 
false  estimate  of  the  throng  as  such.  ''I  cannot 
stop,"  you  say,  "I  have  a  whole  school,  or  parish,  or 
business,  or  society,  to  deal  with."  Your  better 
personal  virtue  never  can  go  out  to  the  impersonal 
crowd.  The  true  follower  of  Jesus  is  always  seeking 
persons  and  knowing  that  the  greatest  power  to 
which  power  can  be  given  is  personality. 

How  much  of  Christian  personal  life  have  we 
here  to  constitute  a  living  church  to-day?  Are  we 
content  to  be  simply  admirers?  Do  we  rejoice  that 
we  live  in  a  Christian  land  and  that  we  are  blessed 


THE    PERSONAL    ELEMENT    175 

by  the  impersonal  influence  of  Christian  civilization  ? 
In  this  press  behind,  I  beseech  you,  push  your  needy 
hand,  through  business  and  society,  through  the 
crowd  of  money-getters  and  the  dull  but  sin-cursed 
patronizers  of  Jesus,  reach  and  be  saved, 

My  dear  friends!  there  are  many  of  you  who, 
here  and  now,  have  understood,  as  I  have  been 
speaking,  the  call  of  the  Spirit  in  these  words  unto 
you.  I  need  not  tell  you  how  the  thronged  life  which 
most  of  us  live  has  done  its  most  evil  work  on  us, 
in  this,  that,  pressing  about  the  personal  Christ  and 
crowding  our  personalities  away  from  Him,  we  have 
not  been  able  to  know  His  salvation.  There  is 
nothing  like  a  crowd  to  break  down  one's  real  and 
true  self-regard.  Many  a  man,  who,  in  the  calm  of 
some  divine  moment  feels  the  value  and  sacredness 
of  his  own  personality,  gets  out  into  the  whirl  of  life 
and  is  dizzied  into  forgetfulness,  of  his  own  need. 
The  throng  makes  us  aimless,  and  we  shove  along 
with  the  multitude,  when  not  the  death-bed  of  some- 
body else  yonder,  but  our  personal  need  here  and 
now  ought  to  hold  our  attention.  Many  a  man  is 
unintelligently  following  after  Jesus  in  some  public 
movement  which  looks  for  some  fair  achievement 
at  the  house  of  some  Jairus,  all  forgetful  in  the 
crowd  which  has  swallowed  him  up,  of  his  own 
wrecked  and  aimless  life.  Let  us  grandly  and  man- 
fully stop  in  this  gabbling  multitude  who  say  kind 
things  about  Christ,  who  are  growing  more  certain 
about  some  miracles  He  is  about  to  perform  in 
modern   civilization,   and,   in    a   moment,    of   self- 


176    PATHS   TO    THE    CITY    OF    GOD 

regard,  find  a  cure  for  our  personal  disorders.  The 
brutality  of  the  mass,  in  which  we  are  become  but 
particles,  is  seen  in  the  way  in  which  we  are  swept 
along  in  our  sin — yet  with  that  same  meaningless 
generality  about  the  wonderful  Christ.  Let  us  resist 
that  process  of  destruction  which  goes  on  never  so 
surely  as  when  the  blundering  of  a  multitude,  even 
in  the  direction  of  truth,  carries  an  unused  and 
submerged  God-given  personality  in  its  train.  Oh, 
for  a  moment  of  manly  self-respect,  then  shall  we 
see  what  a  fortune  of  good  we  have  wasted  on  the 
so-called  remedies  for  sin,  then  shall  we  know  how 
base  a  loss  of  self-hood  we  have  made  in  our  im- 
personal relationship  to  Christ,  and  then,  nerved  by 
the  desperateness  of  our  case,  our,  as  yet,  un- 
destroyed  personality  of  life  will  push  its  way 
through  the  impersonalness  of  the  multitude  of  men 
and  things,  which  follow  after  Jesus  in  all  times, 
until  the  symbol  of  His  holiness  is  touched  by  our 
sin,  and,  never  defiling  Him,  our  purified  life  shall 
begin  its  new  career  of  purity  and  power. 


IX 

THE   SYMPATHIES    OF   RELIGION 
AND   ART 

"  And  I  have  filled  htm  with  the  spirit  of  God,  in  wisdom 
and  in  knowledge,  and  in  all  manner  of  workmanship,  to 
devise  cunning  works ;  to  work  in  gold  and  in  silver  and 
brass  ;  and  in  cutting  of  stones,  to  set  thetn  ;  and  in  carving 
of  timber,  to  work  injxll  manner  of  workmanship."  Exodus 
xxxi.  3,  4,  s- 

THIS  text  includes  the  propositions  that  the 
Holy  Ghost  inspires  works  of  art;  that  the 
spirit  of  God  inclines  men  and  women  to 
embody  the  blessed,  personal  influence  which  Christ 
brought  to  men;  that  it  touched  and  still  touches 
the  souls  of  humanity  to  make  the  temples  of  religion 
places  of  beauty. 

We  may  be  the  more  able  to  see  the  truth  of  this 
when  we  note  the  aim  and  method  of  art  and 
religion. 

I.  Art  reaches  its  finest  successes,  when  it 
realizes  and  is  faithful  to  the  truth  of  beauty  and 
the  beauty  of  truth.  Ugliness  is  untruth.  An  ugly- 
looking  house  is  a  house  which  has  been  made  in 
entire  untruth  to  symmetry,  fitness,  and  form.  It 
is  unfaithful  to  the  relation  which  big  things  ought 
to  have  to  small  things,  and  right  things  to  wrong 
things.    That  is,  it  is  built  on  the  untruth  of  ugliness, 

177 


178    PATHS    TO    THE    CITY    OF    GOD 

yet  it  has  only  the  ugliness  of  untruth.  So  in 
religion,  a  character  is  a  beautiful  character,  when  it 
is  true.  Hegel  said:  "Beauty  is  only  a  particular 
mode  of  utterance  and  representation  of  the  true." 
Art's  smallest  success  came  from  the  adherence 
which  some  soul  had  to  the  beauty  of  truth;  and 
people,  when  they  looked  at  the  result,  found  what 
the  artist  unconsciously  taught,  namely,  the  truth 
of  beauty.  It  is  the  unsymmetrical  that  wrecks  art 
and  human  life.  It  is  the  beauty  of  holiness  that 
saves  human  life,  and  it  is  the  holiness  of  beauty 
that  saves  art. 

What  is  truth,  but  universal  harmony,  universal 
symmetry — and  is  not  that  universal  beauty?  Art 
of  the  masters  and  art  of  the  good,  who  are  working 
on  character — both  are  aiming  at  that.  The  first 
and  last  great  thing  that  art  has  felt,  was  the  truth 
of  an  Infinite.  It  tried  to  build  Jupiter  Olympus, 
to  get  to  that  Infinite.  It  has  tried  to  bring  the 
Infinite  down  from  above.  These  two  phases  of 
that  one  great  aspiration  after  the  Infinite  have  made 
art.  The  truth  of  an  infinite  has  raised  art  from  a 
mere  cave  into  the  Milan  cathedral.  It  had  so 
dominated  man's  mind  that  when  Jesus  came,  art 
had  the  subject  for  which  it  had  been  longing.  In 
Jesus,  God  seemed  finite;  in  Jesus,  man  seemed 
infinite.  But  to  revert  to  this  matter  again,  art  and 
truth,  like  religion  and  truth,  have  been  seeking  for 
one  another.  All  discord  is  untruth,  and  great  art 
is  concord  between  thought  and  fact.  Genuine  art, 
therefore,    is    always   true   and    harmonious.      So 


RELIGION    AND    ART  179 

Harmonious  is  great  art  that  music  is  called  the 
universal  art.  It  has  been  said,  that  if  music  is  fluid, 
architecture  is  solid.  We  hear  the  truth  of  music 
and  call  it  harmony;  we  look  at  the  truth  of  architec- 
ture and  call  it  symmetry.  Architecture  has  been 
called  "frozen  music,"  and  music  is  the  dissolving 
architecture  of  sounds.  All  of  these  go  to  show  that 
art  is  the  soul's  story  of  its  visions  of  truth.  If  the 
story  is  told  truly,  it  is  great  art.  So,  no  one  is 
truer  than  a  great  artist.  He  will  not  lie,  else  he 
will  ruin  his  production.  A  Raphael,  therefore, 
when  he  is  called  to  paint  an  allegorical  picture 
representing  theology,  for  the  palace  of  the  Pope, 
cannot  afford  to  lie,  and  so  he  puts  Savonarola  in 
the  picture  to  represent  Religion.  Though  the 
portrait  was  that  of  a  martyr-reformer,  the  Pope 
had  to  take  it  or  get  another  Raphael. 

This  is  not  only  the  story  of  the  art  of  painting, 
but  of  the  art  of  manhood  and  womanhood.  The 
true  is  the  fit.  And  truth  and  fitness  must  reign 
supreme.  Our  seer's  words  are  rich.  He  says: 
*Titness  is  so  inseparable  an  accompaniment  of 
beauty  that  it  has  been  taken  for  it.  The  most 
perfect  form  to  answer  an  end  is  so  far  beautiful. 
We  feel,  in  seeing  a  noble  building,  which  rhymes 
well,  as  we  do  in  hearing  a  perfect  song,  that  it  is 
spiritually  organic;  that  is,  had  a  necessity,  in  nature, 
for  being;  was  one  of  the  possible  forms  in  the 
Divine  mind,  and  is  now  only  discovered  and  ex- 
ecuted by  the  artist,  not  arbitrarily  composed  by 
him." 


180    PATHS    TO    THE    CITY    OF    GOD 

In  all  this,  I  hope  you  hear  much  of  the  method 
of  soul  art  or  character  production.  A  character  is 
truth  incarnate.  It  is  the  truth  which  a  man  lives 
which  makes  real  and  undying  art  out  of  what  else 
were  the  elements  of  a  daub.  Harmony  makes  him 
rhyme  well.  Religion  brings  this  truth  to  us,  and  it 
is  the  aim  of  religion  to  make  harmonious,  sym- 
metrical characters  which  are  always  beautiful. 

John  Ruskin  has  said  that  "he  who  has  learned 
the  art  of  representing  any  object  faithfully  has  as 
yet  learned  only  the  language  by  which  his  thoughts 
are  to  be  expressed.  He  must  possess  that  some- 
thing which  shall  give  him  precision  and  force  in 
the  language  of  lines." 

Now,  what  is  it  that  gives  a  painter's  lines 
accuracy  and  boldness?  Why,  a  great  experience 
behind  the  artist's  fingers,  in  his  soul,  which  is 
striving  for  expression. 

And  this  makes  more  clear  than  anything  which 
I  can  at  this  moment  quote  from  the  critics  of  art, 
the  sympathy  of  art  with  religion,  in  its  aim,  its 
effort,  and  its  method.  Let  us  look  clearly  at  the 
matter.  Here  is  an  artist.  The  universe  is  surging 
through  him.  Life  is  tingling  its  tumultuous  music 
in  his  every  vein.  Above  him  is  the  fathomless  sky 
with  its  weird  tracery  of  cloud,  wrought  by  the 
invisible  fingers  of  the  sea.  He  is  riding  along, 
through  skies  unnamed,  on  a  globe  called  earth 
which  has  blossomed  and  shall  blossom  again,  which 
has  its  crystal  lakes  in  summer,  and  in  winter  its 
dells  half  musical  with  silent  beauty,  its  foaming 


RELIGION    AND    ART  181 

oceans  which  divide  the  continents,  its  unfound 
heights  towering  into  the  upper  abyss;  its  zephyrs,  its 
cyclones,  its  thunder-clouds,  its  mellow  sunshine; 
its  greatest  wonder,  man,  with  a  face  holding  an 
immortal  soul,  with  head  and  heart  striving 
together  to  say  what  the  Infinite  says  unto  them. 
As  such  our  artist  stands.  This  Infinite  speaks 
through  all  the  ten  thousand  phases  of  these  ten 
thousand  wonders,  and  the  poor  artist — O,  how 
weak ! — strives  to  tell  other  people  what  is  thus  told 
to  him.  That  is  his  work.  How  shall  he  do  this 
work?  Why,  he  takes  sound  and  pours  his  experi- 
ences into  tones,  and  lo,  our  artist  is  a  musician, 
and  his  name  is  Mozart.  He  takes  words  and  pours 
his  experience  into  these  symbols,  and  if  he  uses  a 
pen  he  is  a  poet;  if  he  uses  his  tongue  he  is  an 
orator;  our  artist  has  thus  become  a  Milton  or  a 
Burke.  He  takes  stone  or  brick  and  pours  his 
experience  into  them,  and  he  becomes  an  architect, 
and  his  name  is  Bramante.  He  takes  light  and 
divides  it  into  colors  and  pours  his  experience  into 
them,  and  he  becomes  a  painter,  and  his  name  is 
Leonardo  Da  Vinci.  He  takes  marble  and  pours 
his  experience  into  this,  and  he  is  a  sculptor,  and  his 
name  is  August  Rodin.  So  that  is  just  to  say  that 
"Raphael  paints  wisdom;  Handel  sings  it;  Phidias 
carves  it;  Shakespeare  writes  it;  Wren  builds  it; 
Columbus  sails  it;  Luther  preaches  it;  Washington 
arms  it;  Watt  mechanizes  it."  Painting  was  called 
"silent  poetry,"  and  poetry,  "speaking  painting." 
All  this  is  to  say  that  the  arts  are  the  ways  in  which 


182    PATHS    TO    THE    CITY    OF    GOD 

the  various  minds  of  great  men  have  chosen  to 
express  their  experiences  of  the  Universal  and  the 
Infinite.  Now,  look  to  religion,  and  we  see  that  to 
loyally  use  the  experiences  which  man  has  with  the 
Infinite  is  the  essence  of  religion.  The  conscious 
touch  of  the  conscious  Infinite  upon  the  conscious 
finite  soul  is  the  awakening  of  the  religious  senti- 
ment, and  the  inspiration  of  the  religious  life  is  the 
impulse  which  the  Infinite  gives  unto  the  finite  to 
which  it  speaks,  to  tell,  by  a  loyal  life,  what  the 
Infinite  whispered  unto  it. 

The  soul  of  every  man  is  born  into  the  same 
great  world  which  has  surrounded  the  artist, 
canopied  itself  over  him,  and  carried  him  in  its 
spheral  march.  When  the  Infinity,  who  shines 
in  that  world  and  through  it,  strikes  the  soul  of  a 
Wagner,  he  instantly  feels  the  strings  of  his  spirit 
moving;  he  detects  the  internal  melody;  he  flies  to 
an  instrument;  he  expresses  unto  men  what  he 
heard,  and  we  call  the  expression  of  it — art.  It  is 
good  art  or  bad  art,  as  he  is  faithful  or  unfaithful 
to  the  Infinite  which  he  tries  to  express.  And  that 
is  about  the  story  of  true  religion.  A  John  the 
Baptist  sees  in  his  experience  what  others  do  not 
see  in  theirs;  it  is  the  presence  of  the  Infinite  and  he 
loyally  and  faithfully  tries  to  express  it.  We  call 
that  a  religious  life.  Well,  here  is  a  bootblack.  He 
cannot  tell  it.  He  has  no  language  to  help  him  to 
make  it  plain  to  his  friends.  But  his  experience 
with  right  and  truth  and  goodness,  which  are  all 
attributes  of  the  Infinite,  have  let  him  into  the  very 


RELIGION    AND    ART  183 

presence  of  the  Infinite,  or  have  let  the  Infinite 
into  him,  so  that  he  comes  to  my  study  in  tears,  he 
cannot  tell  it  when  I  ask  him,  but  he  says :  "I  must 
live  a  better  life."  That  is  enough.  Loyal  to  this 
Infinite,  which  he  can  hardly  name,  whose  face  he 
can  see  everywhere,  he  begins  his  life  anew.  And 
what  is  that  life?  Why,  to  put  into  actions,  words, 
deeds,  and  services  what  the  Infinite  is  unto  him. 
That  is  the  religious  life. 

Now,  that  is  what  Raphael  did.  The  Infinite 
seemed  to  show  himself  in  a  sweet  face.  It  struggled 
for  expression.  Raphael  had  to  do  it — and  a 
Madonna  came.  Every  man  who  is  doing  the  manly 
part  has  already  felt  that  the  God  who  shines  in 
the  face  of  a  dying  Jesus  must  be  pictured.  Oh, 
what  an  impulse  comes !  And  it  is  the  great  art  of 
life  to  make  the  convincing  portrait  of  God  for 
others  who  have  dimly  seen  Him  elsewhere,  and 
especially  for  those  who  have  not  seen  Him  as  yet. 
Every  humble  disciple  of  Jesus  is  doing  it  in  lines 
that  shall  not  fade,  in  glory  that  cannot  pass  away. 
The  most  lonely  widow  yonder,  who  has  such 
experience  of  the  Infinite  as  the  half-dissolute 
Raphael  could  not  have,  carries  that  experience  with 
her,  often  speaking  its  secret  in  joy  in  spite  of  her 
tears — and  she  is  writing  it  out  in  precise,  bold  lines, 
in  immortal  art,  in  the  lives  and  fortunes  of  a  little 
brood  of  children  which  her  dying  companion  left 
her  in  poverty  to  uprear.  The  honest  tradesman 
who  has  felt  the  mighty  touch  of  that  same  sweet 
mystery  which  so  kindled  up  the  genius  of  Leonardo 


184    PATHS    TO    THE    CITY    OF    GOD 

and  Angelo,  is  almost  too  full  of  it  to  speak,  but  he 
writes  it  out  in  honest  toil,  honest  sacrifice,  and 
honest  gains,  to  the  admiration  of  the  world.  I 
never  mention  the  world  of  trade  in  this  connection 
but  that  I  think  of  the  noble  merchant,  another  and 
earlier  Roosevelt,  of  New  York,  whose  Christian 
work  I  commend;  who,  like  some  I  know  in  this 
audience,  pursued  his  weekly  task  among  the  down- 
fallen.  He  was  a  Mendelssohn  in  life's  art  whose 
own  separate  soul  could  not  contain  the  Infinite  who 
spoke  in  him  and  through  him.  He  was  ever 
rushing  to  the  keys  of  poverty,  to  express  the  volume 
of  music  within  him.  As  with  Mendelssohn,  it  was 
art — high  art. 

It  is  remarkable  how  the  best  critics  are  agreed 
on  this  point:  that  there  is  a  universe  to  express, 
and  that  art  is  the  finest  expression  of  it.  They  say 
that  the  greater  the  perception  a  man  has  of  this 
Universal  which  lies  behind  and  looks  through  the 
particular  things  in  nature  and  in  mind,  and  the 
greater  his  loyalty  to  this  Universal,  the  greater  is 
he  as  an  artist.  Thus,  such  a  man  as  Turner  had, 
in  a  wonderful  way,  the  ability  to  paint  a  single 
leaf  as  if  it  were  a  part  of  a  great  universe.  And 
Wisdom  is  always  hinting  that  the  only  way  to  paint 
a  finite  part  of  the  world  is  to  paint  it  as  though  an 
infinite  whole  was  behind  and  around  it.  However 
true  it  is  in  art,  that  is  a  large  fact  in  life's  art.  The 
first  thing  a  Rousseau  must  do,  if  he  is  to  make  a 
successful  art-venture  in  pigments,  is  to  get 
acquainted    with    the    universe,    keep    himself   on 


RELIGION   AND   ART  185 

good  terms  with  it.  It  will  not  do  for  a  man,  who 
does  not  expect  life's  pictures  to  be  all  wrong,  to 
neglect  his  acquaintance  with  the  universe.  How 
truly  the  art-critics  talk  of  sympathy  with  nature 
and  truthfulness  unto  the  universe !  And  that  was 
the  very  aim  of  the  greatest  artist  of  human  life. 
Jesus  Christ  was  so  in  sympathy  with  the  universe 
that  He  found  out  that  the  Infinite  Creator  behind 
and  within  it  was  the  Father  of  all,  and  He  said :  "I 
and  the  Father  are  one."  He  explained  the 
philosophy  of  His  art,  and  it  has  ever  since  been 
clear.  It  is  your  duty  and  mine  to  so  know  the 
universe  in  its  heart  and  intention,  that  we  shall 
see  the  meanness  and  rebellion  of  our  sins.  We 
must  get  so  acquainted  with  the  great  Infinite  that 
we  can  make  His  portrait  on  the  canvas  of  our 
life. 

Our  great  American  thinker  has  said  it  in  his 
own  serene  way.  "The  universal  soul,"  he  says,  "is 
the  alone  Creator  of  the  useful  and  beautiful,  there- 
fore to  make  anything  useful  or  beautiful  the  in- 
dividual must  be  submitted  to  the  universal  mind." 
As  Thorwaldsen  submitted  his  individual  chisel  to 
the  universal  law,  of  which  he  had  seen  a  glimmer, 
so  the  true  artist  of  human  life  submits  his  individ- 
ual soul  to  the  soul  of  this  boundless  universe.  Life 
at  its  best  is  so  useful  that  this  is  Godlike;  it  is, 
also,  so  beautiful  that  the  sublimity  of  this  sub- 
mission is  divine.  It  is  no  easy  task.  It  is  the 
symptom  of  greatness  I  behold,  when  I  see  some 
poor  man  taking  his  will  and  bringing  it  into  humble 


186    PATHS   TO   THE    CITY    OF.   GOD 

submission  unto  the  will  of  Him  who  could,  if  He 
would,  raise  him  from  a  cave  to  a  mansion,  who, 
however,  must  have  a  man  at  that  sad  outpost 
there,  bringing  his  whole  life  into  training  and 
harmonious  obedience  unto  the  King,  and  Father 
Eternal,  the  Infinite  God.  He  is  a  child  standing 
by  the  side  of  an  Almighty  musician,  listening  so 
intently  and  tightening  the  strings  so  carefully,  that 
he  may  attain  the  true  tone  of  this  life  and  that 
which  is  to  come.  May  this  yield  us  a  definition, 
namely,  that  religion  is  the  art  of  expressing  the 
Infinite  ? 

II.  Now,  this  will  make  evident  the  sympathy 
from  a  very  incomplete  point  of  view;  but  a  very 
valuable  discovery  it  is  that,  as  there  is  one  Infinite, 
the  mission  of  art  and  religion  is  at  last  the  same, 
namely,  to  get  it  to  man,  or,  rather,  to  get  man  unto 
it.  There  is,  however,  no  remaining  at  this  point. 
And,  going  a  little  farther,  we  see  that  art  tries  to 
express  its  aspirations  toward  an  Infinity,  as  well 
as  to  picture  it;  but  that  while  religion  sees  the 
Infinite  face  to  face  in  Christ,  the  real  ideal,  art  sees 
the  Infinite  in  nature  and  experience;  while  religion 
feels  that  it  must  be  true  to  the  Infinite  in  conduct, 
art  feels  that  it  must  be  true  to  the  Infinite  in 
description  and  aspiration.  Religion  has  its  life  by 
being  true  to  man;  so,  also,  does  great  art.  A 
Christian  life  is  the  result  in  the  one  case,  the  art 
of  the  masters  in  the  other.  Art  must  be  true  to  the 
facts  of  man,  to  be  true  to  the  ideal  of  man.  It 
must  not  expect  to  be  called  the  greatest  art,  as  the 


RELIGION    AND   ART  187 

profound  critic  suggests,  if  it  undertakes  an  Apollo 
who  does  not  exist.  Yet  the  demand,  which  the 
religious  sentiment  makes,  invented  Apollo.  So 
that,  so  far,  religion  and  art  ran  along  to- 
gether. 

When  Jesus,  the  Eternal  fact,  came,  art  as  well  as 
religion  looked  into  His  face  and  was  satisfied.  He 
was  real;  He  was  also  ideal.  Art  and  religion  have 
laid  out  their  strength  upon  His  portraiture,  and 
what  art  cannot  paint,  or  cut  out  of  marble,  or  sing, 
or  describe,  or  utter  with  tones,  religion  calls  the 
divine  Saviour  of  man.  I  infer  that  it  is  Ruskin's 
strongest  point — his  advocacy  of  truth  in  art. 
Whether  we  accept  Ruskin  as  art's  apostle,  or  not,  it 
must  be  admitted  to  be  the  great  assertion  of  the 
apostle  of  religion  that  all  great  living  is  dependent 
upon  its  truth.  A  good  life  is  a  true  life.  Not  a  lie 
in  its  make-up;  no  deception  in  its  silent  growth;  no 
sham  in  its  great  effort — but  a  clear  and  thorough 
fact  from  beginning  to  end.  That  is  a  life  worth  liv- 
ing. Many  are  the  colors  and  brushes,  the  life  pic- 
ture is  one.  Many  are  the  artistic  forces,  the  art  is  a 
unit.  Now,  it  cannot  be  a  unit  if  it  is  not  the  expres- 
sion of  a  comprehending,  authoritative  truth.  Its 
parts  must  be  united  in  and  by  an  ideal  fact  which  we 
call  a  truth.  Its  truth  will  make  it  coinhere.  It 
will  take  the  scattered  colors  and  make  a  unit  which 
all  must  admire.  Holiness  is  righteousness,  and 
righteousness  is  rightness.  A  right  man  is  a  holy 
man.  He  is  true  to  the  universe  because  his  whole 
character    is    the    close    and    sympathetic    setting 


188    PATHS    TO   THE    CITY   OF   GOD 

together  of  the  faculties  which  go  to  the  making  up 
of  a  man.  His  truth  of  character  is  Hke  the  truth 
of  a  self-supporting  roof  whose  parts  hold  one 
another  and  naturally  bear  and  fasten,  so  that  if 
the  roof  were  to  be  pressed  hard  by  some  great 
weight,  it  would  respond  with  the  tenaciousness  of 
the  truth  itself.  That  is,  it  is  right.  We  call  a  man 
of  that  sort  holy.  And  so  the  sacred  books  talk  of 
the  "beauty  of  holiness."  Use  and  beauty  are  thus 
met  together.  Art  is  their  marriage-altar.  For  all 
art  of  brush  or  life  is  great,  only  as  it  is  the  embodi- 
ment of  great  truth. 

How  the  history  of  art  and  the  story  of  the  race's 
life  prove  this!  When  art  told  the  truth  about 
the  living  and  aspiring  forces  of  human  nature,  she 
has  made  grand  and  noble  successes;  when  the 
trumpet-tongued  sentiments  of  the  soul  have  been 
unexpressed,  or  when  art  has  lyingly  hid  them  in 
silence,  then  she  has  been  vapid  and  ineffectual. 
Look  even  at  Greek  art  to  see  a  proof,  which  at 
first  you  would  not  suspect.  Homer  was  an  artist 
in  poetry.  What  did  he  do?  He  represented 
truthfully  the  great  soul  of  Greece.  His  poetry 
showed  how  earnestly  the  spirit  of  man  was  aiming 
at  a  noble  ideal  through  rough  Agamemnon  and 
the  barbarous  Ulysses.  It  was  great  poetry  which 
portrayed  that  restless  striving.  He  showed,  un- 
consciously, how  ardently  the  mind  of  Greece 
looked  through  all  the  tyranny  of  heaven  and  the 
cruelties  of  sea,  through  the  dim  but  grim  myth  of 
war,  and  the  rest,  for  the  Eternal  Father  of  Spirits. 


RELIGION    AND    ART  189 

To  write  that  truth  required  great  literature,  and  so 
truth  made  Homer  a  great  artist.  By  his  side  was 
the  planner  of  the  Parthenon. 

Well,  the  planner  of  that  massive  temple  simply 
tried  truthfully  to  express  the  truest  and  best  feeling 
in  Greece,  and  lo !  the  result  was  that  pure  magnifi- 
cence. 

He  who  saw  them  rising  in  idea  said :  "I  will  put 
them  in  stone,"  and  undying  art  was  the  result.  By 
the  side  of  these  worked  Phidias.  He  listened 
intently  unto  Greece.  He  was  so  true  to  the  life  of 
his  country  that  nothing  but  a  Zeus  of  ivory  and 
gold,  sixty  feet  high,  could  express  his  estimate  of 
what  the  soul  sighed  for. 

He,  unconsciously,  pictured  in  that  great  statue 
the  mind  of  man  aiming  through  it,  and  rising  by 
means  of  it,  unto  the  conception  of  the  Father  in 
Heaven,  To  leave  out  the  glory  that  was  Greece, 
it  is  only  commonplace  to  say  that  only  the  deepest 
truth  of  human  nature  has,  in  poetry,  architecture, 
song,  eloquence,  sculpture,  and  painting,  moved 
forth  in  the  greatest  art.  Turn  to  Galilee.  As  a 
matter  of  fact,  Jesus  is  the  greatest  truth  of  the 
human  soul  made  manifest.  He  is  man's  dream 
realized.  He  was  the  one  toward  whom  the 
Greek  aimed  in  his  statues.  He  was  the  God 
incarnate,  after  whom  the  idols  were  only  poorly- 
conceived  efforts.  And  this  Jesus  has  walked  forth 
in  art,  to  the  glory  of  the  Father  and  the  glory  of 
all  art. 

I  have  tried  to  indicate  how  all  the  art  of  the 


190    PATHS    TO    THE    CITY    OF    GOD 

world  is  the  aspiration  of  something,  or  the  embodi- 
ment of  the  best  thought  and  feehng  of  the  race. 
Greece,  which  was  the  home  of  pre-Christian  art, 
had,  as  I  have  said,  a  Homer  and  Phidias  and  a 
planner  of  the  Parthenon,  who  all  aimed  at  the 
description  of  the  truth  which  at  last  beheld  itself 
in  Jesus  of  Nazareth.  So,  when  He  came,  this 
passion  for  such  as  He  was,  showed  how  truly  He 
was  desired  by  coming  in  all  the  arts  and  taking 
Him  as  their  theme.  But  while  they  took  Him  as 
their  theme,  they  unconsciously  took  Him  as  their 
Saviour.  For  Jesus  rose  again  in  art,  no  more 
than  did  art  have  its  resurrection  in  Jesus.  After 
that  life,  so  true;  after  that  doctrine,  so  true;  after 
His  exposition  of  the  future,  so  true,  if  a  man  would 
stand  among  the  truest  painters,  the  truth  which  was 
in  Jesus  must  be  his  theme.  So  that,  if  Orcagna 
would  be  renowned,  he  paints  a  "Last  Judgment," 
founded  on  a  truth  in  Jesus,  If  Rembrandt  would 
be  a  peer  of  the  greatest,  he  must  choose  to  paint 
Jesus  and  the  "Woman  Accused  in  the  Synagogue." 
If  Leonardo  Da  Vinci  would  begin  a  new  era,  he 
must  attempt  the  "Day  of  Judgment."  If  Raphael  is 
to  surpass  him,  he  must  execute  the  "Transfigura- 
tion." If  Guido  Reni  shall  be  allowed  a  place  with 
the  great,  he  must  paint  the  "Nativity."  And  so  Jesus 
has  touched  art,  and,  like  Lazarus,  it  came  forth. 
His  truth,  and  the  truth  of  Him,  have  made  the 
palette  of  Tintoretto  heavy  with  the  colors  of  the 
"Marriage  at  Cana."  They  have  made  the  brush 
of    Correggio   glorious    with    the    tints    of    "Ecce 


RELIGION    AND    ART  191 

Homo"  in  which  "the  heart-throbs  of  humanity" 
found  a  place  of  speech.  They  have  trained  the 
genius  of  Albert  Diirer  to  picture  forth  the  "Bearing 
of  the  Cross."  They  have  fired  the  genius  of  Titian 
unto  the  heat  from  which  was  thrown  off,  as  a 
spark,  the  "Martyrdom  of  St.  Lawrence."  And 
Giotto,  after  centuries,  robbed  the  physical  of  its 
power  to  attract,  while  awe  and  love  look  up  to  the 
divine  face  in  his  picture,  and  belated  Hogarth  with 
"Paul  before  Felix,"  and  Caracci  with  the  "Resur- 
rection," are  only  isolated  names  in  the  list  of  art's 
great  men  who  have  tried  to  speak  His  truth.  And 
time  would  fail  me  to  speak  to  you  of  the  salvation 
which  Jesus  and  His  truth  wrought  in  the  other 
arts.  Architecture  put  on  her  beautiful  array  to 
greet  the  King  of  Kings.  Poetry  has  tuned  lyres 
she  knew  not  of,  since  He  spake.  Eloquence  found 
her  first  fit  subject  in  Jesus  and  His  truth.  Sculpture 
has  dulled  her  chisels  in  the  vain  effort  to  tell  all 
of  Him.  Like  music,  they  have  tried  to  adore  Jesus, 
and  while  they  adore.  His  scarred  hand  reaches 
down  and  saves.  For  when  Haydn  and  Handel  and 
Bach  and  Mozart  and  Mendelssohn  and  the  rest, 
tried  to  reach  their  loftiest  altitudes,  they  took 
tones  and  poured  into  them  the  significance  of  the 
Creation  which  groaned  for  Him,  or  His  ideal  man- 
hood, as  others  strove  after  it,  or  wandered  to  His 
baby-home,  or  away  to  the  altar-steps  of  the  world 
on  Calvary — anywhere  they  went  so  that  they  might 
gain  an  eternal  tone,  if  happily  they  should  hear  it, 
which  should  save  their  music  to  the  listening  future. 


192    PATHS    TO    THE    CITY    OF    GOD 

The  eternal  tone  was  found  in  an  eternal  manhood 
and  in  an  eternal  Saviour.  So,  their  music  has 
partaken  of  His  immortality.  A  single  fact  in  all 
the  history  of  art  is  this :  the  more  really  it  has  left 
that  great  mystery  which  surrounds  man  and  human 
life  in  the  hands  of  a  faith  which  looks  toward  a 
joyous  consummation,  the  more  really  has  it  suc- 
ceeded. For  man  will  be  reverent  in  the  presence 
of  the  truths  of  his  own  experience.  These  truths 
take  the  form  of  Gothic  temples  and  the  Madonnas 
of  the  painter.  In  working  upon  these  which  record 
and  embody  the  highest  truths  of  the  soul,  the 
greatest  of  men  have  found  congenial  occupation. 
Fra  Angelico,  luminous  and  so  religious  that  God 
was  dear  to  his  thoughts,  put  all  his  prayers  into 
paintings,  and  even  Michael  Angelo  could  make  a 
sibyl  or  a  prophet  all  the  more  valuable  to  art,  if  only 
he  might  flood  the  face  with  the  expectation  of  a 
Christ.  Elevated  seriousness  and  other  fine  quali- 
ties, after  which  our  nature  seems  to  be  yearning, 
at  which  it  seems  to  have  been  aimed,  wait  and  wait 
in  vain  for  expression,  until  they  are  found  on  a 
torn  and  soiled  piece  of  paper,  on  which  Leonardo 
Da  Vinci  tried  to  picture  the  face  of  Jesus.  Religion's 
greatest  fact  is  also  art's  most  serviceable  truth. 
Looking  into  art  from  religion,  we  behold  the 
holiness  of  beauty;  looking  at  religion  from  art,  we 
behold  the  beauty  of  holiness. 

So,  then,  we  can  expect  only  what  we  discover  in 
the  story  of  man,  that  as  art  has  won  its  triumphs 
by  unyielding  love  of  and  fidelity  to  truth,  so  also 


RELIGION    AND    ART  193 

does  life.  As  Homer,  a  pagan,  of  the  far  past,  was 
an  artist  because  he  was  true  to  the  greatest  truth 
of  human  nature  which  came  near  him,  so  was 
Marcus  Aurelius,  a  pagan  also,  a  profound  success 
in  life's  fine  art,  because  he  so  faithfully  took  the 
highest  truth  which  he  could  find,  and  embodied  it 
in  his  whole  career.  His  life  was  fine  art,  because  it 
was  the  faithful  expression  of  a  fine  truth.  The 
thinker  says :  "The  highest  thing  that  art  can  do  is  to 
bring  before  you  the  true  image  of  a  noble  human 
being."  If  such  be  so,  you  may  see  how  it  is  that, 
just  as  the  planner  of  the  Parthenon  was  a  great 
artist  because  he  took  the  best  and  truest  aspiration 
of  which  he  had  any  knowledge  and  put  it  into  stone, 
to  express  it  to  all  ages,  so  such  a  man  as  Socrates 
becomes  a  great  name  among  the  artists  of  human 
life,  because  he  took  the  aspiration  after  a  perfect 
manhood,  and  tried  to  give  it  an  expression  to  his 
country  and  race.  ''Truth,"  cries  Ruskin.  And 
Phillips  Brooks  says:  "Truth  is  the  characteristic 
word  of  Jesus."  It  is  so  because  it  is  the  truth  of  a 
character,  as  it  is  of  a  painting,  that  holds  its  parts 
together  and  gives  unity.  And  so  Phidias  succeeds 
in  stone  by  the  very  same  fact  which  makes  an 
Epictetus  such  an  inspiring  figure  in  the  life  of  man. 
It  is  the  truth  laboring  for  expression  which  makes  a 
moralist  even  in  words  like  Seneca.  It  is  the  truth 
expressed  in  Jesus  which  makes  a  saint  intact  like 
Francis.  It  was  the  idea  of  the  Father  in  Heaven 
striving  for  utterance  that  spoke  in  Jupiter  Olympus, 
and  the  Father  in  Heaven  speaking,  who  spoke  in 


194    PATHS   TO   THE    CITY;   OE   GOD 

silence  which  art  has  been  true  enough  to  leave  for 
the  Infinity.  O,  there  are  Bachs  and  Beethovens  in 
hfe's  practical  way,  who  never  touch  their  best 
strings  until  they  try  to  express  the  truth  which  they 
see  or  hear  in  Jesus.  There  are  Giottos,  Raphaels, 
Diirers,  Caraccis,  in  life's  road,  who  can  do  no  fine 
painting  until  they  try  to  express  the  truth  which 
comes  to  them  from  the  Crucifixion,  the  Resurrec- 
tion, the  Bearing  of  the  Cross,  or  the  Transfigura- 
tion. When  they  paint,  life's  great  art  comes.  The 
Jesus  who  saves  the  art  of  this  world,  saves  the  art 
of  all  worlds.  His  figure  is  life.  His  touch  is  that 
of  an  internal  resurrection. 

The  moral  contagion  of  fine  art,  in  life  and  the 
world's  gallery,  is  the  same.  Raphael  painted  St. 
Cecilia.  Correggio  saw  it.  It  awoke  the  kindred 
enthusiasm.  He  said :  "I,  too,  am  a  painter."  One 
of  the  greatest  preachers  uses  this  as  an  illustration 
of  the  astonishing  efficacy  of  the  true  religion.  The 
greatness  of  a  good  or  true  thing  at-ones  us  to  itself. 
But  this  is  only  a  single  illustration  of  how  that 
which  will  help  to  make  good  art  for  our  time,  taken 
into  a  spiritual  realm,  will  help  to  make  good  art 
for  eternity. 

So  sympathetic  is  the  instinct  of  true  art  with 
the  sentiment  of  religion,  that  when  we  read  one 
of  the  great  essays  on  art,  it  seems  as  though  it 
were  an  essay  to  help  and  deepen  religious  life.  Let 
me  illustrate  this  with  the  use  of  an  essay  to  which 
I  have  already  referred.  Says  its  great  author: 
"The  first  and  last  lesson  of  the  useful  arts  is  that 


RELIGION    AND    ART  195 

Nature  tyrannizes  over  our  works.  They  must  be 
conformed  to  her  law  or  they  will  be  ground  to 
powder  by  her  omnipresent  activity.  You  cannot 
build  your  house  as  you  will,  but  as  you  must.  It  is 
the  law  of  fluids  that  prescribes  the  shape  of  the 
boat — keel,  rudder,  and  bows — and  in  the  finer  fluid 
above,  the  form  and  tackle  of  the  sails."  If  I  turn 
to  the  greatest  book  of  religion  from  this  essay  on 
art  I  find  that  the  art  of  manhood  and  womanhood 
has  the  same  laws.  As  the  builder  of  a  house  has 
stem  nature,  according  to  whose  laws  he  has  to 
work  if  he  will  make  a  house  that  shall  endure,  so 
does  every  soul  who  tries  to  build  character  find  an 
Almighty  who  rules  above  and  beneath;  and  if  he 
would  make  a  character  to  last,  all  the  laws  of  this 
Eternal  One  must  be  consulted  and  obeyed.  The 
house  artist  has  to  build  with  reference  to  every 
storm,  to  every  wind,  and  streak  of  sunshine;  to  the 
nature  about  him  he  must  give  heed.  The  soul 
artist  has  to  build  character  with  reference  to 
the  strange  winds  which  lie  unhorsed  as  yet  in 
the  abyss  of  the  divine  soul,  with  reference  to  the 
tempests  that  will  sweep  upward  from  the  deep; 
with  reference  to  the  nature  of  the  Eternal  must  it 
be  planned  and  executed. 

The  poet,  from  whom  I  have  been  quoting,  sings 
in  his  old  age : 

"  As  a  bird  trims  her  to  the  gale 
I  trim  me  to  the  storm  of  time, 
I  man  the  rudder,  reef  the  sail. 
Obey  the  voyage  at  age,  obeyed  at  prime. 


196    PATHS    TO   THE    CITY    OF   GOD 

Lowly,  faithful,  banish  fear, 

Right  onward  then  unharmed; 

The  port,  well  worth  the  cruise,  is  near, 

And  every  wave  is  charmed." 

Now,  if  the  fluid  sea,  in  which  a  bark  has  to 
float  and  speed  her  trackless  way,  makes  it  necessary 
that  the  craft  takes  its  shape  from  the  nature  of 
the  ocean  in  which  it  pursues  its  route,  so  does  man, 
a  born  seafarer,  to  sail  on  the  boundless  eternity  to 
the  coast  of  God,  find  it  the  true  principle  of  his 
art  to  construct  each  individual  private  brig  and 
that  navy  of  private  boats  which  we  call  society,  in 
exact  accordance  with  the  nature  of  the  sea  through 
which  he  pushes  his  way.  Shall  he  not  be  construct- 
ing a  character  which  has  the  nature  of  eternity  in 
it,  if  he  constructs  the  ship  of  his  soul  on  the  laws 
of  never-ending  time  ?  And  that  upper  fluid,  which 
is  to  fill  those  same  sails  with  propelling  power — if 
we  construct  our  sails  with  reference  to  that  bound- 
less atmosphere  shall  not  the  navy  of  society,  the 
private  sail-boat  of  our  single  life,  carry  in  its  very 
make-up  a  hint  that  its  course  and  destination  are 
limited  only  by  the  chart  of  God? 

Many  are  the  presentations  which  the  great  seer 
gives  to  the  idea  that  ''There  is  but  one  reason.  The 
mind  that  made  the  world  is  not  one  mind,  but  the 
mind.  Every  man  is  an  inlet  to  the  same  and  to  all 
of  the  same.  The  delight  which  a  work  of  art 
affords  seems  to  arise  from  our  recognizing  in  it 
the  mind  that  formed  nature,  again  in  active  opera- 
tion."   And  that  is  the  principle  of  the  art  in  human 


RELIGION   AND   ART  197 

life,  as  we  perceive  in  anyone  great  in  goodness. 
Through  such  characters  you  see  God.  They  are 
the  avenues  of  the  Eternal.  They  are  the  ways 
along  which  the  Almighty  travels  to  the  world. 
They  are  inlets  to  Jehovah.  How  unquestionably  in 
them  we  see  that  behind  all  lies  what  cannot  be 
seen!  And  that  is  the  Divine  mind,  which  they  let 
us  into  by  their  faithfulness  unto  Him.  They  con- 
sult nothing  but  the  boundless  Deity,  and  so  their 
souls  become  pieces  of  divine  art  in  which  God 
writes  the  story  of  Himself.  As  in  poetry,  ''where 
every  word  is  free,  where  every  word  is  necessary," 
which  is  so  good  that  it  "could  not  have  been  other- 
wise than  it  is,"  which  "sounds  rather  as  if  copied 
out  of  some  invisible  tablet  in  the  Eternal  mind, 
than  as  if  arbitrarily  composed  by  the  poet,"  which 
was  "found,"  not  "made,"  which  the  "muse 
brought"  to  the  poet,  so  the  religious  life  is  so  rooted 
in  God  that  it  seems  as  if  grace  does  it  all;  life  runs 
itself,  for  like  Jesus  the  soul  says:  "Not  I,  not  I,  my 
Father!  He  doeth  the  works."  That  sort  of  art  is 
God-bom  and  triumphantly  answers  to  the  assertion 
that  "every  genuine  work  of  art  has  as  much  reason 
for  being  as  the  earth  and  the  sun.  The  gayest 
charm  of  beauty  has  a  root  in  the  constitution  of 
things." 

And  so  I  might  make  Symonds  and  the  hundred 
others  illustrate  the  fact,  that,  because  art  is  aimed 
at  the  beautiful  and  symmetrical,  because  great  art 
is  the  embodying  of  great  aspiration,  because  art  is 
the  bringing  of  the  infinite  and  the  finite  together, 


198    PATHS   TO    THE    CITY    OF   GOD 

religion  is  its  great  iiispirer  and  ought  to  be  its 
best  advocate — even  more,  that  since  art  and  rehgion 
are  so  near  in  aim  and  ideal,  the  method  of  one  is 
the  method  of  the  other. 

Art  and  Religion — together  here,  they  shall 
never  be  separated.  As  in  the  past,  so  always  shall 
the  soul  of  man  aspire  and  embody  it  in  words  of 
eloquence,  in  strains  of  music,  in  lines  of  poetry, 
in  the  magic  of  color,  in  stony  grandeur  of  sculpture, 
or  architecture.  And,  by  and  by,  when  the  earth 
shall  reel  from  beneath  his  feet,  man  shall  behold 
the  indivisible  unity  of  religion  and  art  in  Heaven. 
Only  the  art  most  expressive  of  the  final  religion 
will  abide.  In  unstudied  but  divine  grandeur,  the 
towers  and  minarets  of  God  might  rise  into  that 
azure  resurrection  morning.  Out  of  windows  of 
the  heavenly  architecture  might  look  the  bright- 
faced  souls  for  whom  Christ  died.  But  that  would 
be  only  the  beginning  of  the  artistic  triumph  which 
the  sentiment  of  religion  should  have  achieved. 
Music  is  the  all-comprehensive  art.  The  voices  of 
the  elders  shall  speak  the  sublime  significance  of  a 
name  greater  than  all  other  names.  With  a  divine 
eloquence,  they  shall  pour  out  the  symbols  of  im- 
mortal praise.  The  culminating  moment  will  be 
one  of  song.  Yonder,  might  grow,  in  the  out-spread 
careers  of  men  and  women,  the  glorious  touches  of 
a  thousand  faithful  brushes,  moved  by  a  thousand 
faithful  hands,  having  created  the  paintings  for 
the  gallery  of  God.  And  there,  on  pedestals  of 
warm  influence  and  sympath}^  for  man,  the  white 


RELIGION    AND   ART  199 

souls,  around  whom  the  chisels  of  providence  and 
experience  have  run  their  course,  might  stand,  each, 
as  it  prays,  uttering  a  benediction.  But  the  deepest 
thing  in  these  arts  is  hamiony.  They  will  vanish. 
Music  will  be  supreme,  and  yonder  the  tuneful 
melodists  of  the  soul,  who  have  learned  to  live  in 
harmony,  shall  pour  out  their  strains.  All  these  arts 
— poetry,  architecture,  sculpture,  eloquence,  painting 
— shall  bring  their  raptures  and  reach  their  highest 
development  there.  They  are  not  universal  arts. 
Music  is.  And,  therefore,  the  world  of  religion  shall 
be  the  world  of  art,  when  the  new,  new  song  breaks 
forth  from  a  thousand,  thousand  lips:  ''Unto  Him 
that  loved  us  and  washed  us  from  our  sins  in  His 
own  blood,  and  hath  made  us  kings  and  priests  unto 
God,  and  His  Father,  be  glory,  and  dominion, 
forever,  Amen!" 


X 

MEDITATION  AND  THE  RELIGIOUS 
LIFE 

"  And  Isaac  went  out  to  meditate  in  the  field  at  eventide^ 
and  he  lifted  up  his  eyes  and  saw,  and  behold  the  camels  were 
coming."     Genesis  xxiv.  6j. 

IT  must  always  remain  one  of  the  very  strong 
proofs  of  the  truthfulness  of  these  sacred  pages, 
as  a  record  of  the  life  of  men  and  women,  that 
the  somewhat  fragmentary  biographies  of  which  we 
are  thus  possessed,  present  such  incidents  in  each 
career  as  authenticate  and  make  real  every  other 
fact  and  meaning  of  their  history.  For  example, 
when  we  hear  Peter,  in  the  crisis  of  his  disappoint- 
ment and  sorrow,  start  forward  with  the  same 
impulsiveness  which  on  other  occasions  manifested 
itself  in  declarations  of  love  looking  back  from  the 
distorted  present  into  the  simple  past — when  we 
hear  Peter  say,  "I  go  a  fishing,"  we  recognize  in  that 
decisive  word  the  spirit  which  breathes  in  all  the 
rest  of  his  sayings,  and  we  see  in  all  the  rest  of  his 
acts  a  still  deeper  manifestation  of  the  same  interest- 
ing personality.  When  we  see  Jacob  in  the  hour  of 
his  flight — still  that  mixture  of  base  and  noble 
motives  which  he  was — making  a  partnership  with 
his  crafty  mother  in  the  shrewd  attempt  to  conceal 

200 


MEDITATION  201 

a  necessary  flight  under  an  errand  of  love,  the  act 
itself  is  clothed  with  all  the  meanings  of  other  acts 
with  which  it  is  related ;  they  all  are  the  forthputting 
of  the  one  character.  Under  every  wave  lies  the 
same  great  restless  sea.  And  so  of  this  thing  which 
Isaac  seems  here  to  do  so  undeliberately  and  yet  so 
distinctly.  It  lays  bare  the  secret  current  of  his 
personality,  so  that  we  see  how  the  movement  within 
all  the  incidents  in  his  career  made  them  each  inter- 
pretive of  the  other.  It  is  the  finest  kind  of 
portraiture — fixing  the  attitude  and  features  of  the 
man  at  a  moment  when  he  is  sure  to  expose  that 
single  trait  of  character  which  is  most  central  and 
vital  in  his  soul  and  its  career.  The  trait  of  charac- 
ter in  Isaac  is  his  meditativeness. 

I  know  how  surely  in  a  time  like  ours  of  self- 
assertion  and  noisy  activity,  I  may  seem  to  many 
of  you  to  be  finding  a  singularly  uninteresting  man 
and  theme  in  Isaac  and  his  eventide  musings.  Poor 
man!  we  say;  he  either  could  not  remain  at  some 
task  which  he  had  in  practical  good  sense  set 
himself  to  do,  or  he  would  not  impatiently  go  in- 
quiring about  the  time  when  the  next  arrival  from 
the  far  Orient  was  expected — poor  man !  He  must 
aimlessly  go  off  solitary  and  musingly  into  what 
lovers  call  the  gloaming,  if  not  to  weep  for  his 
mother,  at  least  to  fondle  with  his  thoughts  and  look 
to  heaven  in  his  prayers!  We  are  constantly 
tempted  in  our  age  to  underestimate  such  a  character 
as  Isaac  and  his  contribution  to  the  advance  and 
development  of  our  humanity.    We  think  of  him  as 


202    PATHS    TO    THE    CITY    OF    GOD 

a  man  of  a  vastly  inferior  type,  when  placed  between 
the  stately  Abraham  and  the  smart  Jacob.  He  seems 
to  us  never  to  have  gotten  away  from  the  sentiment- 
alizing influence  of  his  mother's  tent,  where  the 
jealous  love  of  Sarah  gave  a  quite  feminine  character 
unto  his  mind  and  life.  The  peace  fulness  of  his  soul 
passes  for  powerlessness;  the  easy  devoutness  of 
his  spirit  is  mistaken  for  a  gentle  stupidity  or 
religious  passivity.  In  spite  of  his  faith  and  purity, 
notwithstanding  his  patience  and  reverence,  his 
whole  life  seems  to  be  preparing  itself  for  that 
pathetic  ending  when  he  shall  lie  breathing  into  his 
last  words  the  sobs  of  a  stricken  heart — a  man  con- 
fessing in  the  moment  of  that  successful  treachery 
of  his  wife  and  son,  Rebekah  and  Jacob,  how 
thoroughly  he  had  been  a  victim  to  more  subtle  and 
adventurous  minds  than  his. 

We  need  not  stop  this  morning  to  find  out  the 
causes  which  have  acted  so  effectively  in  setting  the 
age  of  Isaac  with  its  simple  manners  and  innocent 
religiousness,  so  much  in  contrast  with  our  own 
with  its  complex  machineries  and  involved  piety. 
Useless  it  is  for  us  to  note  the  many  evident  forces 
which  have  been  so  influencing  men  in  recent  times 
that,  if  you  ask  the  secret  of  life,  as  the  secret 
of  eloquence  was  once  asked,  you  get  the  old 
reply  of  Demosthenes :  "Action !  Action !  Action !" 
Every  now  and  then,  we  see,  however,  that  just  as 
sooner  or  later  the  orator,  so  does  every  man  who 
is  serious  about  living  truly  and  fully,  find  that 
there  is  something  deeper  and  more  powerful  than 


MEDITATION  203 

action,  something  which  must  lie  behind  it  out  of 
which  it  must  be  fed;  something  which  shall  make 
it  real,  something  which  shall  make  it  rational  and 
noble,  something  which  shall  give  it  a  soul ;  and  that 
something  is  the  inner  life,  into  whose  deeps  Isaac 
looked  when  he  "went  out  to  meditate  at  eventide." 
If  life  were  simply  a  task  to  be  performed,  there 
might  be  some  apparently  greater  reason  for  our 
supposing  that  it  is  ours  to  be  whirled  along  from 
labor  to  labor,  ever  intent  on  doing  something,  with 
our  eyes  looking  constantly  down  on  our  work.  But 
this  greater  reason  would  prove  a  great  falsity. 
No  man  can  do  his  work  well  who  keeps  his  eye  on 
it  alone.  By  and  by  his  eyes  grow  unsteady  and 
refuse  to  see.  In  the  eye's  refusing  to  do  its  best 
work,  it  tells  the  man  who  thus  abuses  it,  that  it  is 
unnatural  that  he  should  lose  himself  in  the  thing 
he  is  doing,  and  that  the  thing  he  is  trying  to  do 
will  never  be  done  worthily  and  well,  if  he  shall 
not  let  his  eye  both  rest  itself  upon  other  and  wider 
expanses  and  sweep  into  this  task  from  those 
expanses  nobler  motives  and  larger  visions  that  shall 
find  their  way  into  this  work  to  its  ennobling.  All 
around  us  are  good  men  and  women  who  are  missing 
this  truth.  And  are  not  we  ourselves  making  our 
work  less  noble,  the  product  of  our  hand,  and  heart, 
and  brain  less  perfect,  simply  because  of  this 
shutting  out  of  the  spirit  which  in  that  twilight  took 
this  ancient  Jew  out  into  the  broad  fields,  under 
the  great  lofty  sky,  to  meditate?  Our  results  are 
petty  and  puerile;  our  productions  are  small  and 


S04    PATHS    TO    THE    CITY    OF    GOD 

weak;  our  whole  lifework  is  insignificant  and  mean- 
ingless, just  because  we  have  sat  with  bended  head 
over  it  so  slavishly,  just  because  we  have  not  lifted 
up  our  eyes  and  taken  the  solemn,  tender  sky  into  our 
brains  and  let  it  go  out  again  into  our  labor  through 
the  unwearied  finger  which  toiled  away.  Labor  is 
no  more  than  a  commodity,  if  the  soul  does  not  put 
something  of  her  own  life  and  quality  in  it.  A  true 
seer  has  very  wisely  said  that  labor  would  be  but 
a  commodity,  "if  the  servant  were  an  engine  of 
which  the  motive  power  were  steam,  magnetism, 
gravitation,  or  any  other  agent  of  calculable  force. 
But  he,  being  on  the  contrary  an  engine  whose 
motive  power  is  a  soul,  the  force  of  this  very 
peculiar  agent  enters  into  all  the  political  econo- 
mists' equations  and  falsifies  every  one  of  their 
results.  The  largest  quantity  of  work  will  be  done 
by  this  curious  engine  for  pay,  or  under  pressure, 
or  by  help  of  any  kind  of  fuel  which  may  be  applied 
by  the  caldron.  It  will  be  done  only  when  the 
motive  force,  that  is  to  say,  when  the  will  or  spirit  of 
the  Creature  is  brought  to  the  greatest  strength  by 
its  own  proper  fuel — namely  by  the  affections." 
The  truth  in  all  this  for  our  present  purpose  is,  that 
no  man  can  do  his  task  truly,  thoroughly,  unless  in 
him  and  behind  the  task  is  a  life  of  ideas  and  senti- 
ments larger  than  the  task  he  has  to  perform — a  life, 
out  of  which  his  ability  and  enthusiasm  are  to  be 
fed.  The  best  things  are  meditations  first;  then 
actions;  and  the  dullest  task  of  life  will  never  be 
crowned  with  splendid  performance  until  out  of  the 


MEDITATION  205 

serene  skies  of  meditation  there  flash  radiant  beams 
upon  the  noisy,  dust-covered  world  of  action. 

Why  is  one  thing  done — one  product — nobler 
than  another  ?  Why  is  the  statue  from  the  chisel  of 
Thorwaldsen  finer  than  a  piece  of  marble  upon 
which  just  as  many  hours  by  just  as  sharp  chisels 
have  been  as  laboriously  spent?  Why  is  the 
Declaration  of  Independence  greater  than  so  much 
paper  written  over  far  more  beautifully  by  a  writing 
master?  Why!  Behind  the  statue  of  Thorwald- 
sen is  a  vast  eventide  of  meditation.  Ideas  and  senti- 
ments, thought  and  passion — the  whole  inner  life 
stands  behind,  making  it  noble  with  the  deliberate 
grandeur  of  the  soul.  It  is  more  than  it  seems, 
because  Isaac  has  gone  out  to  meditate  at  eventide 
and  the  high  converse  of  his  spirit  has  made  its 
path  in  every  pure  white  chisel  course.  The  Decla- 
ration of  Independence  is  the  very  shrine  to  which 
the  spirit  of  America  meditating  at  eventide,  in 
darkness  smitten  with  noon,  or  in  twilight  hours  of 
freedom,  has  brought  the  fruitage  of  its  meditation; 
and  ideal  life  has  given  to  it  imperishable  worth. 

"Action !  Action !  Action !"  will  not  make  an 
orator.  Eloquence  is  the  bursting  out  of  a  flame 
which  tells  that  the  soul  within  it  is  on  fire,  and  only 
by  how  much  the  mind  has  mused  in  silence  and 
alone,  by  meditation  in  some  eventide,  until  the  fire 
burned  and  added  to  its  flickering  life  the  fuel  of 
suggestive  ideas  and  noble  feelings,  can  eloquence 
with  her  immortal  lips  utter  her  commanding  voice. 
"Action!  Action!  Action!"  will  not  make  a  worth)ij 


206    PATHS    TO    THE    CITY    OF    GOD 

character.  Character,  that  influences  and  endures, 
is  Hke  a  cathedral  whose  rising  glories  have  each 
been  conceived  in  some  lonely  hour  of  meditation. 
It  is  of  worship,  reverence,  praise. 

Life  is  more  than  a  task  to  be  performed!  Our 
world  is  more  than  the  earth  beneath  us;  it  is 
inclusive  also  of  the  sky  above  us  by  whose  lights 
we  may  see  the  earth  at  all.  And  the  central  thing 
in  human  life  is  the  man  who  is  living  his  life.  He 
is  incomparably  sacred.  His  task  must  never  rule 
him,  though  it  compel  him  into  a  meditative  life  in 
order  to  be  worthily  done.  He  is  the  child  of  earth 
and  sky  and  as  such  his  own  nature  for  its  true 
manifestations  and  career  must  find  the  resource  of 
life  in  meditation. 

Wondrously  true  to  human  nature's  best  hopes 
has  this  whole  Hebrew  stream  of  teaching  been.  In 
fact  the  Western  man — the  humanity  of  Europe  and 
America — must  always  look  Eastward  to  see  the 
completion  of  that  half-truth  of  which  most  of  its 
life  has  been  the  illustration.  Man  is  made  for 
action,  says  the  West.  Man  is  made  for  meditation, 
says  the  East.  And  the  Orient,  sure  in  her  faith 
that  man  is  to  attain  his  best  self  in  meditation,  has 
added  to  Isaac's  name  and  company  the  most  im- 
perishable names,  the  most  stirring  legends  of  those 
who  have  gone  out  to  meditate  at  eventide.  Bud- 
dhism, with  its  noble  figure — so  impressive  that 
Western  song  has  created  his  rarest  shrine — is  the 
characteristically  Oriental  religion.  The  long  cen- 
turies have  swept  by,  and  still  with  its  mighty  host 


MEDITATION  207 

does  the  majestic  character  of  Buddha  abide  calm, 
patient,  dehberate,  brooding  over  the  whole  life  of 
the  East,  as  when  for  six  years  he  waited  under  the 
sacred  tree  of  Gaya  for  the  great  illumination.  Take 
that  other  less  popular  religion,  and  before  the  eager, 
laborious  West,  with  fever-dream  and  frenzied  zeal, 
comes  the  stately  son  of  Abraham,  so  Isaac-like  in 
solitude  and  temper — Mohammed,  out  of  whose 
brooding  soul  went  empire  and  victory.  It  is  the 
East  to  which  in  our  unquiet,  hasty,  precipitant  age 
we  find  men  turning  to  welcome  in  our  swift,  noisy 
cities  some  brooding  Buddhist  or  to  linger  with 
delight  in  England  over  the  story  of  his  meditative 
faith.  Put  meditation  out  of  life  at  the  front  door, 
and  it  will  return  through  the  back  window  when 
we  are  most  sure  of  manliness  and  godliness.  Every- 
where our  deeper  thought  has  to-day  a  welcome  for 
the  Hebrew  spirit.  Not  that  we  act  too  much,  but 
that  we  meditate  too  little;  not  because  we  do  more 
than  we  ought,  but  because  we  brood  less,  does  the 
saner  student  of  human  life  feel  the  need  of  the 
meditative  spirit  in  life  and  in  religion. 

Think  of  the  human  soul  in  any  of  its  character- 
istic attitudes,  in  any  of  its  nobler  activities,  and 
you  cannot  fail  to  see  how  partial  its  achievements, 
how  shrunken  and  dwarfed  its  manifestations  must 
be — and,  most  sad  of  all,  how  untrue  and  frag- 
mentary its  own  regal  self  is,  without  the  meditative 
life.  Life  is  always  falling  short  of  what  it  might  be, 
because  the  soul  behind  it  all  is  falling  short  of  its 
own  complete  life.     I  care  not  how  true  and  noble 


208    PATHS    TO    THE    CITY    OF    GOD 

the  task  may  seem  in  itself,  it  constantly  comes  to  be 
partial  and  unworthy,  when  the  calm  and  patience 
of  meditation  are  shut  out.  Many  a  minister  of 
Christ  has  allowed  himself  to  draw  in  his  life  of 
action  too  heavily  upon  the  life  of  meditation  which 
must  always  lie  like  a  mighty  reserve  behind  it,  as 
the  deep,  quiet  lake  lies  away  up  there  in  the  moun- 
tain solitude  and  feeds  the  dashing  stream  which 
leaps  from  rock  to  rock  to  the  valley  below.  It 
makes  what  he  does  weak  and  untrue.  Fellow 
Christian  worker !  You  and  I  have  no  business  by 
our  life  of  action,  however  good  and  noble  and  true 
it  may  be,  to  cut  ourselves  off  from  our  base  of 
supplies.  The  Syrians  went  on  foreign  conquests 
so  far  that  when  they  returned  their  throne  was 
gone.  It  has  been  my  joy  to  witness  and  to  labor 
in  some  special  seasons  of  revival,  and  never  yet  have 
I  known  a  Christian  worker  who  was  eager  to  help 
others,  whose  love  and  faith  ran  out  through  all  the 
days  in  laborious  concern  for  souls  who  did  not  also 
find  at  the  end  that  action  so  disproportionate  had 
left  him  weak  indeed.  Out  into  the  fields  at  even- 
tide, must  Isaac  go  to  meditate — ^to  muse,  to  feel 
again  the  worth  of  his  own  soul  and  the  nearness  to 
God,  as  in  solitary  and  quiet  brooding  the  great 
relationship  of  the  soul  with  its  Father  is  realized 
again.  Missions,  the  care  of  the  poor,  the  help  of 
the  unfortunate,  the  blessing  of  him  that  is  ready 
to  perish,  the  reform  of  abuses  in  church  and  state — 
all  worthy  work  is  sublime,  until  by  doing  it  alone 
the  sublimity  of  the  soul  which  draws  its  nobility 


MEDITATION  209 

from  its  communion  with  God  and  great  truths, 
from  the  eternal  spirit  and  the  richness  of  holy 
sentiments,  is  lost  and  the  good  worker  becomes 
only  a  worker — unblessed  by  a  dream,  unnerved  by 
the  vision  of  God.  *'0h,  I  have  not  time  to  pray," 
says  the  busy  toiler  for  God.  "Oh,  I  have  not  a 
moment  for  meditation  on  God  and  the  soul" — says 
the  excited  worker  for  the  Lord.  There  never  was 
a  more  wretched  misunderstanding  of  yourself, 
your  task,  and  your  God.  This  command  which 
came  to  Moses  comes  to  every  man :  "See  that  you 
make  all  things  according  to  the  pattern  showed  to 
thee  in  the  mount."  We  are  to  make  the  ideal  real. 
The  ideal  we  can  never  see  by  going  with  our  heads 
down  all  the  while,  doggedly  bent  on  doing  some- 
thing while  our  hands  are  still  laboring  at  our  task. 
Prayer  is  the  upward  looking  of  the  eye  to  behold 
the  heavenly  pattern  according  to  which  alone  our 
work  may  worthily  be  done. 

It  may  be  a  glorious  labor  in  which  you  are 
engaged,  but  it  will  be  disastrous  to  you,  if,  in  its 
pursuit,  your  spiritual  expenditure  is  greater  than 
your  receipts.  A  bankrupt  you  will  be  at  the  end,  if 
your  outgo  is  greater  than  your  income.  Why,  you 
say,  must  I  not  lose  myself?  Must  I  not  spend  and 
be  spent  in  God's  service  ?  Must  I  not  be  completely 
given  up  to  Christ?  To  Christ,  to  God,  to  Christ's 
idea  of  your  task,  to  the  working  out  of  that  idea 
and  plan  in  our  labor?  The  answer  is  yes,  but  not 
to  the  labor  itself.  And  the  only  way  in  which  you 
may  worthily  lose  yourself  is  deliberately  and  in 


210    PATHS    TO    THE    CITY    OF    GOD 

tranquillity  of  manly  self-respect  to  let  your  soul 
muse  upon  this  divine  ideal  which  hangs  in  the  sky 
over  your  head  and  which  you  must  make  real. 

"This  is  all  true,"  says  one,  "and  it  is  wise  for 
the  worker  to  realize  how  his  labor  will  be  less  com- 
pletely and  nobly  done,  if  behind  it  there  is  no 
patient  thoughtfulness  and  reverent  upward  looking; 
but  I  do  not  see  that  I  who  am  a  searcher  for  truth, 
can  do  aught  but  keep  my  eye  on  my  book  and  dig 
about  amongst  facts,  and  blow  the  dust  from  off 
ancient  events,  if  I  am  to  do  anything  at  all."  Dear 
friend,  behind  your  mistake  lies  the  same  forgotten 
fact.  Only  by  the  truth  which  I  reverently  allow  to 
kindle  in  my  musing  soul  a  flame  which  like  a 
beacon  shall  light  me  on,  shall  I  ever  find  my  way  to 
more  truth.  We  go  from  truth  to  truth,  as  the 
traveler  in  the  valley  of  Baca,  from  strength  to 
strength,  to  the  well  out  of  which  we  shall  get  other 
strength;  or,  as  the  apostle  says,  from  glory  unto 
glory.  And  so  always  there  are  great  truths  which 
come  to  men  in  brooding  hours.  The  mystic  John 
outruns  the  active  Peter,  and  comes  first  to  the 
open  sepulcher  of  the  Christ.  The  still,  small  voice 
speaks  not  to  the  man  of  stormy  haste  or  whirlwind- 
like excitement,  but  to  the  calmed  Elijah  who  has 
at  length  acted  the  truth  which  he  does  know  by 
previous  solitary  meditation,  and  who  in  some  cave 
is  made  at  last  patient  to  receive  from  God  the 
truth  to  the  brooding  soul  which  the  unfettered 
thoughts  hit  upon  unawares.  Action  is  requisite  to 
the  finding  of  truth,  but  it  must  be  action  which  has 


MEDITATION  211 

meditation  behind  it,  and  which,  when  it  is  done, 
looks  upward  immediately  for  the  opening  of  the 
skies.  Meditation  makes  action  so  rational  that  it 
becomes  the  manifestation  of  thought.  Meditation 
gets  hold  of  the  original  ideas  on  which  things  were 
constructed,  the  threads  on  which  events  are  strung, 
and  thus  anticipates  the  discovery  of  what  action 
would  find  out  in  painful  experiences.  Action  with 
thought  as  its  soul  is  a  finder  of  truth.  Action  with- 
out meditation  is  a  bruised  child,  coming  home  with 
nothing  but  wounds  for  meditation  to  heal.  Nothing 
is  so  practical  or  so  wise  as  the  ideal.  As  the  world 
was  first  an  idea  and  afterwards  a  fact,  so  in  man's 
life  the  ideal  should  precede  the  actual.  A  man  must 
love  truth  for  its  own  sake  before  he  will  ever  be 
able  to  make  it  over  into  sublime  action. 

"And  Isaac  went  out  to  meditate  in  the  field  at 
eventide.  And  he  lifted  up  his  eyes  and  saw,  and 
behold  there  were  camels  coming."  Practical  duties 
new  and  strange  were  coming  rapidly  toward  this 
Oriental  transcendentalist.  He  was  standing  for  a 
moment  between  two  sets  of  very  realistic  experi- 
ences. He  had  just  lost  his  mother — the  woman  to 
whose  strong,  affectionate  will  he  had  always  sub- 
mitted. He  was  now  beholding  the  approach  of  his 
wife — the  woman  to  whose  personality  the  name  of 
"the  loosed  cord"  had  been  given.  Between  these 
he  stands.  If  you  could  reach  him  now,  knowing 
what  was  behind  him  of  imperious  control  and 
knowing  what  was  before  him  of  spiritual  servitude 
and  heartbreak,  would  you  not  say,  "Isaac!   Stand 


212    PATHS    TO    THE    CITY    OF    GOD 

still  and  let  the  currents  of  God  sweep  through  you, 
leaving  rich  deposits  of  faith  and  trust,  making  your 
whole  soul  pure  and  true!  Stand  still,  rapt  soul, 
dream  on;  for  soon  duty  will  demand  all  that 
dreaming  may  have  for  its  inspiration  and  food !" 

Ay,  it  was  the  most  practical  thing  he  could  do. 
It  is  always  the  smartest  common  sense  to  have 
visions  that  are  deeper,  stronger,  richer  than  our 
duties.  A  man  is  never  fitted  to  see  the  camels 
coming,  until  he  has  learned  the  glory  of  Isaac's 
eventide. 

Oh,  my  friends! — behind  us  as  doers,  toilers, 
sufferers,  workers,  must  be  manhood,  self-contained, 
calm,  deliberate,  intelligent,  true — if  we  are  to  act 
nobly  and  live  worthily.  Our  religion  will  be  a 
fussy,  weary,  worrying  passion  which  burns  up  for 
want  of  fuel,  if,  however  noble  the  tasks  we  set 
before  us,  we  do  not  live  more  deeply  than  we  labor, 
live  in  the  presence  of  truth,  the  soul  and  God. 
Permanent  convictions  which  insure  completeness 
of  action  need  the  atmosphere  of  thought  to  disclose 
them;  and  constant,  un wasting  motive  power  for  an 
active  spiritual  life  must  be  supplied  by  the  flame 
which  comes  of  musing  on  the  permanent  realities — 
truth,  the  soul,  God.  Great  performance  lay  before 
the  disciples  only  after  they  had  learned  to  stand 
alone  and  quietly  deal  with  spiritual  facts.  On  their 
way  to  Emmaus,  while  they  mused  the  fire  burned. 
The  world  was  never  so  sure  of  feeling  the  power 
of  Christ  as  when  there  rose  up  in  their  brooding 
souls  these  visions  which  were  to  walk  the  earth  in 


MEDITATION  213 

their  duties.  Behind  all  action  must  be  a  spirit  of 
meditative  tranquillity  which  is  never  ready  to  v^ork 
until  it  is  ready  to  wait,  which  does  not  reach  up  to 
the  clouds  and  wring  out  a  shower,  but  lies  open  to 
the  infinite  heavens  for  the  silent  sunbeam  or  the 
dew  and  rain.  That  temper  must  possess  us.  All 
great  realists  are  first  and  always  idealists — Moses, 
John  the  Baptist,  Harry  Vane,  Gordon.  Looking 
upward  to  get  hold  of  God,  looking  inward  to  get 
hold  of  one's  soul,  looking  outward  for  duties  to 
be  done — these  the  musing,  meditative  soul  finds  at 
eventide  to  be  paths  to  its  real  life,  assurances 
of  true  success,  as  it  lifts  its  eyes  and  over  the 
dusty  roadways  of  life  it  beholds  the  camels  coming. 
How  shall  we  attain  the  intelligent,  thoughtful, 
unwasting  manhood  ?  Surely  our  help  lies  in  Christ 
Jesus.  Let  us  bring  our  half-life  to  Him — out  of 
His  wholeness  He  will  complete  it.  Behind  His 
divine  activity,  which  was  the  outflowing  of  what 
was  first  the  inflowing  into  man  of  God,  was  a 
divine  calm,  an  untroubled,  meditative  peace,  a  self- 
contained  grandeur  of  spiritual  life  which  throbbed 
all  the  more  divinely  and  perfectly  when  He  spoke 
to  the  woman  at  the  well  or  touched  the  chilliness 
of  the  dead.  Always  His  life  of  activity  was  the 
expression  of  that  profound  communion  which  He 
had  with  the  Father.  His  Father's  ideas  were  His 
ideas;  His  Father's  life  was  His  life.  The  stream  of 
divine  influence  which  ran  out  of  His  life  was  first 
a  stream  of  divine  life  running  into  it — a  stream 
which  perhaps  began  to  flow  out  when  He  said :  'T 


214    PATHS    TO    THE    CITY    OF    GOD 

must  be  about  my  Father's  business,"  which  had 
begun  its  inflow  in  the  unknown  moments  of  medita- 
tion on  the  Father's  will  which  lay  behind  it. 

God  bless  you  musing  in  some  eventide  of  life! 
The  morning  will  bring  a  to-morrow  with  Rebekah 
joys,  trials,  and  cares.  You  will  need  all  your  ideas 
for  your  tasks,  all  your  dreams  for  your  duties.  Be 
manly;  lift  up  your  head;  let  there  be  a  sky  above 
your  life.  Give  yourself  to  Christ;  and  there  will 
open  up  behind  your  weak  life  all  the  ideas  and  will 
of  God,  in  which  your  meditating  soul  will  find  for 
your  tasks  and  character  in  this  world  the  powers 
of  the  world  to  come. 


XI 
ACTION  AND  THE  RELIGIOUS  LIFE 

"  I  was  not  disobedient  unto  the  heavenly  vision."  Acts 
xxvi.  ig. 

PAUL  is  telling  Agrippa  the  story  of  his  career; 
and  by  its  simple  relation,  that  record  is  be- 
coming the  finest  of  arguments.  He  has  set 
out,  in  this  august  presence,  so  to  put  the  facts  of 
his  life  before  this  man,  that  he  shall  honor  the  truth 
of  which  he,  Paul,  is  the  apostle,  and,  if  God  wills, 
give  him  his  freedom.  It  is  unnecessary  to  say  that 
this  is  our  opportunity  for  obtaining  from  Paul's 
lips  the  disclosure  of  what  constitutes,  to  him,  the 
secret  of  such  a  splendid  career.  He  himself  may 
feel  altogether  abased  and  humiliated  at  its  failures 
and  shortcomings,  but  there  is  the  result,  as  we  look 
back  upon  it  over  the  centuries,  and  it  is  too  great 
for  us  to  miss  its  secret.  Christianity  as  a  faith  has 
been  preached  by  this  weary  and  torn  old  hero,  so 
that  the  world  shall  carry  its  messages  on  every 
wave  of  human  life;  and  he  is  waiting  for  a  martyr's 
crown. 

We  want  the  explanation  of  such  a  life.  Some- 
where in  the  story  the  origin  of  this  power  is  to 
flash  out — somewhere,  as  he  moves  along  in  an 
argument  at  once  so  personal  and  so  profound,  he 

215 


216    PATHS    TO   THE    CITY    OF    GOD 

will  let  us  see  the  fact  which,  like  a  keystone,  gives 
place  and  value  to  all  the  other  facts  of  this  life.  At 
last  it  comes.  The  story  of  the  vision  on  the  road  to 
Damascus  stirs  his  whole  spirit  as  he  tells  it  over 
again;  and  as  he  once  more  stands  in  that  blinding 
effulgence  he  hears  that  divine  voice.  But  is  it  the 
vision,  alone?  No;  other  men  have  had  visions  of 
which  the  world  has  never  felt  an  influence.  Even 
a  Judas  walked  and  talked  with  this  Jesus,  as  "one 
born  out  of  due  time"  might  not  do;  yet  Judas 
betrayed  Him  and  put  a  dark  page  into  human 
history.  Paul's  vision  was  ennobling,  thrilling, 
beyond  words  to  tell — yet  that  vision  was  not  all. 
Something  beside  the  vision  must  explain  his  life. 
In  one  word  he  tells  it.  Unconsciously  separating 
his  imperial  self  and  his  grand  life  from  the  whole 
race  of  brilliant  visionaries  and  useless  dreamers,  he 
says,  "I  was  not  disobedient  unto  the  heavenly 
vision."  "Ah,"  the  muse  of  history  seems  to  say, 
"visions  other  men  have  had,  but  in  this  man  vision 
passed  over  into  action."  I  had  a  vision?  Yes! 
but  the  equally  important  point  is,  "I  was  not  dis- 
obedient unto  the  heavenly  vision." 

You  see  at  once  that  I  do  not  ask  you  to  look  at 
Paul,  the  man  of  such  abundant  labors  and  such 
stupendous  achievement  as  a  man  of  less  meditation 
than  Isaac,  the  patriarch.  Indeed,  I  am  quite  sure 
that  Paul  might  be  used  as  a  noble  illustration  of 
the  value  of  the  inner  life  of  musing  thought  and 
brooding  meditation.  But  in  Paul,  thought  and 
work  were  almost  contemporaries;  and  one  went 


ACTION  217 

out  of  his  personality  like  a  great  strong  angel  to 
manifest  and  to  urge  on  the  kingdom  of  the  other. 
Paul  was,  like  Isaac,  first  an  Idealist,  then  a  Realist. 
Paul  first  lived  in  the  world  of  spiritual,  then  of 
material  facts.  First  the  vision  came — then  a  prac- 
tical life  all  suffused  with  the  glory  of  the  ideal,  in 
which  it  was  seen  that  he  was  not  disobedient  unto 
the  heavenly  vision;  nay — a  life  practical  and  help- 
ful, which  is  seen  to  be  the  large  and  complete 
remanifestation  of  that  vision  in  the  duties  and 
ministries  of  his  career. 

Our  chief  concern  with  Paul  and  his  vision  in  a 
time  like  ours,  with  its  almost  grotesque  introversion 
which  is  not  meditation  at  all,  is  to  note  for  our 
good,  how  easily  and  manfully  he  escapes  the  usual 
experiences  which  come  to  a  man  of  such  a  vision- 
seeing  power,  and  how  he  assures  his  soul  of  a 
worthy  life  by  frankly  accepting  the  truth  which 
comes  in  his  vision  and  pouring  all  its  influence 
into  the  tasks  which  wait  for  his  performance. 
Whenever,  with  our  better  thinking,  we  look  upon 
such  a  spirit  as  Isaac  going  out  into  the  fields  to 
meditate  at  eventide,  we  are  likely  to  forget  his 
prayerfulness  and  open-eyed  faith,  and  to  think  of 
him  as  a  sort  of  Oriental  Hamlet,  taking  up  the 
realities  of  his  consciousness,  and,  by  a  process  of 
analysis,  leaving  them  meaningless  and  himself 
irresolute  as  he  confronts  the  practical  affairs  of  life. 
We  do  Isaac  injustice  by  thus  transferring  to  him 
the  features  of  a  time  which  seems  on  the  one  side 
an  over-active  and  on  the  other  an  over-conscious 


218    PATHS    TO    THE    CITY    OF    GOD 

age.  We  can  hardly  overstate  the  almost  absurd 
criticalness  of  some  really  fine  minds  which,  with 
fastidiousness  and  cynicalness,  brood  and  muse  while 
duties  wait  begging  to  be  done — a  quality  of  mind 
the  very  opposite  of  what  we  studied  in  Isaac — or 
that  rushing,  unreceptive,  bustling  seizing  of  tasks 
and  achievements,  without  meditation  at  all.  It  is 
strange  to  find  good  men  the  victims  of  one  or  the 
other  of  these  vicious  moods.  Of  the  dangers  of  a 
life  without  meditation,  I  have  spoken.  Of  the 
dangers  of  a  life  all  meditation — a  life  which  with- 
out action  has  analyzed  its  visions  into  thin  air,  our 
age  presents  some  very  sad  examples,  while  the  story 
of  Paul,  the  man  of  both  meditation  and  action,  goes 
on  its  shining  way,  telling  its  secret — "I  had  a 
vision,  and  I  was  not  disobedient  unto  that  heavenly 
vision." 

I  have  mentioned  Shakespeare's  Hamlet  as  an 
example  of  this  wretched  self-analysis  and  weakness 
with  which  Paul's  healthful  obedience  of  his  vision 
and  massive  energy  of  influence  stand  in  such  con- 
trast. A  recent  student  of  the  great  dramatist 
would  have  us  think  that  "Hamlet"  was  written  to 
show  how  surely  any  soul  will  miss  its  best  and 
truest  self  and  how  its  life  must  suffer  shipwreck, 
when  the  passion  for  musing  and  meditation  never 
allows  the  truth  it  knows  or  the  emotions  it  feels  in 
some  hour  of  vision  to  pass  over  into  action.  This 
critic  tells  us  that  the  only  book  in  which  Shake- 
speare's autograph  appears  is  a  copy  of  Florio's 
translation  of  Montaigne's  "Essays,"  now  in  the 


ACTION  219 

British  Museum.  Emerson  puts  Montaigne  amongst 
his  Representative  Men  as  the  Skeptic.  Just  about 
the  time  of,  or  a  httle  later  than,  the  appearance  of 
this  play  in  England,  came  forth  the  intimation  that 
Montaigne's  ideas  of  duty  and  of  life  were  becoming 
popular  with  some  of  the  leading  writers.  Thought- 
fulness  meditating  itself  into  cynicalness,  and  musing 
questioning  passing  into  a  brooding  doubt  in  which 
no  action  was  possible — knowledge  conscious  of 
itself,  ending  in  suggesting  dangers  to  unnerve 
resolution — Shakespeare  saw  all  these  in  Montaigne 
and  in  many  an  English  page.  Using  many  of  the 
Frenchman's  phrases,  adopting  much  of  his  meta- 
phor, and  often  putting  his  ideas  into  firmer  words 
than  they  had  known,  he  took  up  the  old  play  and 
made  Hamlet  a  Montaigne,  who  had  said :  "There's 
nothing  good  or  ill  but  thinking  makes  it  so;"  and 
then  Shakespeare  sent  him  out  with  all  his  visions 
of  truth  to  which,  unlike  Paul,  he  brought  no  obedi- 
ence, with  all  his  meditations  on  duties  which  were 
never  performed,  with  all  his  musings  on  principles 
which  never  obtain  authority  over  his  life,  with  all 
his  eloquent  and  tender  brooding  which  never  brings 
forth  the  action  which  it  suggests.  Thus  Hamlet 
traverses  down  the  centuries,  the  fascinating  but 
pathetic  illustration  of  how  disastrous  to  the  soul 
and  to  the  world  is  the  separation,  in  the  same  man, 
of  the  dreamer  from  the  doer,  the  thinker  from  the 
worker,  the  man  of  meditation  from  the  man  of 
action. 

Let   us    stay   awhile    longer    with    this    great 


220    PATHS    TO    THE    CITY    OF    GOD 

preacher  Shakespeare  with  his  text  and  sermon, 
Hamlet;  so  may  we  be  better  able  to  appreciate  our 
apostle  and  missionary,  St.  Paul,  who  was  "not 
disobedient  unto  the  heavenly  vision."  There  is  no 
such  grand  failure  in  all  the  history  of  that  mankind 
which  genius  has  created  for  the  world,  as  Hamlet, 
Prince  of  Denmark.  And  the  abysmal  depth  into 
which  he  falls,  the  wide  roads  of  agony  which  his 
very  powers  place  in  front  of  others,  the  whole  sad 
missing  of  life's  great  end,  come  from  his  weakness 
at  a  single  point — the  point  where  Paul  made  con- 
nection, vital  and  faithful,  between  his  every  vision 
of  truth  and  his  duty  which  waited  to  be  done — the 
point  where  he  was  obedient  to  the  heavenly  vision. 
Every  man  of  fine  powers  of  thought  is  tempted  by 
his  powers,  at  that  very  point.  It  is  so  easy  for  a 
bright  thinker  to  think  so  interestingly  and  so  inter- 
estedly, that  thought  becomes  life  and  destiny  to 
him.  Our  age,  which  has  the  two  dangers  of  over- 
consciousness  in  the  midst  of  tasks  which  it  has  set 
itself  to  do,  an  age  whose  best  man  has  a  temper 
which  either  meditates  exclusively  or  acts  exclu- 
sively, has  for  its  finer  souls  no  more  subtle  tempta- 
tion for  its  Hamlet  or  its  Paul  than  the  attractions  of 
a  purely  ideal  life. 

"  Thus  conscience  [t.  e.,  consciousness]  doth  make  cowards  of 
us  all; 
And  thus  the  native  hue  of  resolution 
Is  sicklied  o'er  with  the  pale  cast  of  thought, 
And  enterprises  of  great  pith  and  moment 
With  this  regard  their  currents  turn  awry 
And  lose  the  name  of  action." 


ACTION  221 

This  is  tlie  irresolute  and  ineffective  Dane's 
story  of  his  own  powerlessness. 

Mr.  Lowell  says:  "It  is  an  inherent  peculiarity 
of  a  mind  like  Hamlet's  that  it  should  be  conscious 
of  its  own  defect.  Men  of  his  type  are  forever 
analyzing  their  own  emotions  and  motives.  They 
cannot  do  anything  because  they  always  see  two 
ways  of  doing  it.  They  cannot  determine  on  any 
course  of  action,  because  they  are  always,  as  it  were, 
standing  at  the  cross-roads,  and  see  too  well  the 
disadvantages  of  every  one  of  them.  It  is  not  that 
they  are  incapable  of  resolve,  but  somehow  the  band 
between  the  motive  power  and  the  operative  faculties 
is  relaxed  and  loose.  The  engine  works,  but  the 
machinery  it  should  drive  stands  still.  The  imagina- 
tion is  so  much  in  over-plus  that  thinking  a  thing 
becomes  better  than  doing  it,  and  thought,  with  its 
easy  perfection,  capable  of  everything  because  it  can 
accomplish  everything  with  ideal  means,  is  vastly 
more  attractive  and  satisfactory  than  deed,  which 
must  be  wrought  out  at  best  with  imperfect  instru- 
ments, and  always  falls  short  of  the  conception  that 
went  before  it.  .  .  .  Hamlet  knows  only  too 
well  what  'twere  good  to  do,  but  he  palters  with 
everything  in  a  double  sense.  He  sees  the  grain  of 
good  there  is  in  evil,  and  the  grain  of  evil  there  is  in 
good,  as  they  exist  in  the  world,  and,  finding  that  he 
can  make  those  feather-weighted  accidents  balance 
each  other,  infers  that  there  is  little  to  choose  be- 
tween the  essences  themselves.  .  .  .  He  dwells 
so    exclusively    in    the    world    of    ideas    that    the 


222    PATHS    TO   THE    CITY    OF    GOD 

world  of  facts  seems  trifling;  nothing  is  worth  the 
while;  and  he  has  been  so  long  objectless  and  pur- 
poseless, so  far  as  actual  life  is  concerned,  that  when 
at  last  an  object  and  an  aim  are  forced  upon  him,  he 
cannot  deal  with  them,  and  gropes  about  vainly  for  a 
motive  outside  of  himself  that  shall  marshal  his 
thoughts  for  him  and  guide  his  faculties  into  the 
path  of  action.  ,  .  .  Like  a  musician  distrust- 
ful of  himself,  he  is  forever  tuning  his  instru- 
ment, first  overstraining  this  cord  a  little  and  then 
that,  but  unable  to  bring  them  into  unison,  or  to 
profit  by  it  if  he  could.  He  breaks  down  the  bridges 
before  him,  not  behind  him,  as  a  man  of  action  would 
do.  Hamlet  may  teach  us  that  all  the  noblest  gifts 
of  person,  temperament,  and  mind  slip  like  sand 
through  the  grasp  of  an  infirm  purpose." 

For  a  moment  turn  to  Paul,  the  man  of  vision 
too,  and  see  how  by  strength  of  purpose  the  thinker 
is  transformed  into  the  missionary,  the  seer  of  Jesus 
Christ  become  the  heroic  apostle  of  His  name. 
Certainly,  Paul's  vision  was  enough  to  keep  him 
meditating  forever.  It  did  put  a  mysterious 
grandeur  of  fact  and  thought  behind  his  life,  from 
which  it  was  constantly  drawing  strength.  But  a 
Hamlet  would  have  put  all  its  sacred  glory  under 
his  fatal  analysis.  He  would  have  seen  this  explana- 
tion and  that,  this  reason  and  that,  for  its  appearance 
and  for  its  disappearance.  He  would  have  even 
studied  its  application  to  life  and  duty,  and  he  would 
have  found  how  in  a  thousand  ways  it  might  illu- 
minate or  darken  his  path.     It  would  have  opened 


ACTION  223 

up  so  many  roads  to  labor  and  sacrifice,  or  enjoy- 
ment and  privilege,  that,  unto  the  very  end,  he 
would  have  stood  there  without  entering  either, 
though  a  city  of  God  stood  at  the  end  of  the  path. 

This  difference  brings  me  to  the  first  great  fact 
concerning  this  problem  in  men's  lives,  and  that  is, 
that  no  man  gets  the  supreme  value  of  his  medita- 
tion and  vision  until  he  puts  it  into  action.  How 
bewildering  an  experience  was  this  to  St.  Paul. 
How  little  of  this  vision  could  he  understand  and 
appreciate.  Aye !  how  little  of  it  is  it  probable  he 
would  have  at  all  understood,  if  he  had  begun  to 
disentangle  the  threads  of  the  infinite  and  finite 
which  made  up  its  warp  and  woof.  I  can  see  him 
sitting  there  yet,  if  he  had  lived,  taking  out  this 
thread  of  God's  life  and  this  other  thread  of  his 
own  life — for  all  such  visions  involve  the  weaving 
of  both  the  Divine  and  human — and  finding  that  he 
never  can  get  the  other  end  of  the  golden  infinite 
thread  of  divine  purpose,  or  that  he  cannot  under- 
stand the  shortness  of  that  other  thread  of  his  own 
destiny.  I  can  see  him  throwing  it  all  away  as  the 
mind  is  ultimately  sure  to  do  when  it  is  perplexed 
without  hope;  and  I  fancy  him  going  out  into  life 
with  that  one  mighty  experience,  so  torn  and  mis- 
used, that  he  looks  back  upon  that  which  might 
have  made  him  great  and  true,  as  the  thing  lying 
at  the  bottom  of  his  cynicalness  and  skepticism. 

It  is  only  a  fancy.  Paul  was  no  Hamlet ;  and  all 
life  lay  before  him^  wherein  his  meditation  and  his 
activity  should  play  back  and  forth,  each  strengthen- 


224    PATHS    TO    THE    CITY    OF    GOD 

ing  the  other,  each  taking  up  the  other's  power  until 
in  both  his  soul  and  his  tasks  the  whole  hidden 
meaning  of  his  vision  should  be  found.  And  this 
was  Paul's  life.  Between  that  vision  of  his  glorified 
Redeemer  and  the  world's  need  he  stood :  sometimes 
he  seemed  to  be  living  entirely  in  his  activity  for  the 
supplying  of  that  crying  need;  sometimes  he  seemed 
wholly  dreaming — to  be  gazing  again,  in  Roman 
jail  or  on  stormy  sea,  upon  that  celestial  face  or 
hearing  that  commanding  voice;  but  the  truth  is 
that  in  the  most  exhausting  performance  of  duty  he 
was  just  putting  forth  from  hand  and  brain  and 
heart  that  dear  old  vision.  And  as  it  went  out  into 
the  forms  of  labor,  as  event  and  achievement  came 
like  new  creations  from  his  unwearied  soul,  he  saw 
in  them  all  the  remanifestation  of  that  once-mysteri- 
ous sight,  now  so  much  more  plain,  now  so  much 
more  reasonable  than  ever  before. 

Yes,  man  is  a  child  of  earth  and  sky.  His  life 
runs  down  and  takes  hold  of  the  world  on  which  he 
walks  and  lives.  His  life  also  runs  up  and  takes 
hold  on  the  heavens  in  whose  air  he  lifts  his  head. 
This  gives  him  a  double-life,  almost  a  double-world. 
He  is  ever  standing  between  the  blue  sky  above  and 
the  dull  earth  beneath  him.  The  sky  is  his  in  its 
boundlessness  and  freedom  for  visions,  for  medita- 
tions, for  musings,  for  dreams.  The  earth  is  his  in 
its  limitedness  and  with  its  restraints,  for  tasks,  for 
actions,  for  service,  and  for  duties.  He  is  to  receive 
from  the  experiences  in  the  one,  he  is  to  give  in  the 
experiences  with  the  other.     This  is  life;  and  its 


ACTION  225 

history  is  that  men  fail  of  their  highest  manhood 
because  they  see  and  Hve  in  only  one-half  of  this 
truth.  Here  is  a  man  who  is  all  sky — his  life  is  a 
long  musing  and  an  unending  meditation.  He  has 
visions  above  him,  but  the  earth  around  his  feet 
has  only  felt  their  celestial  power  as  he  has  gone 
stumbling  over  human  needs  and  cares,  gazing  with 
rapt  soul  into  the  heavens.  Truth  after  truth  has 
come  to  him,  stirring  him  for  a  moment  to  sublime 
ecstasy  of  meditation;  but  it  could  do  no  more  with 
him,  he  has  simply  meditated  until  it  has  grown 
meaningless.  He  is  a  dreamer  who  has  never  done 
what  he  dreamed.  Here  is  another  of  the  opposite 
sort.  He  is  all  earth.  His  life  is  only  one  long 
activity,  a  perpetual  doing  of  something.  Both  are 
partial,  fragmentary;  and  I  care  not  what  the  one 
man  may  be  dreaming  or  what  the  other  man  may 
be  doing,  both  are  failures.  Neither  has  attained 
nor  can  he  attain  to  the  highest  and  broadest  man- 
hood. 

But  of  the  two,  it  seems  that  the  most  pathetic 
is  the  man  of  meditation  whose  truth  and  right  of 
which  he  has  such  visions  are  pulverized  and 
analyzed  into  gases  by  the  very  powers  of  mind 
which  discover  them  and  make  him  a  being  interest- 
ing to  earth  and  heaven.  Just  as  the  very  goodness 
of  some  hard-working  Christian  makes  him  so  eager 
to  labor  for  others  that  he  does  not  allow  himself  a 
moment  for  contemplation  and  receptiveness :  so  the 
very  genius  which  some  fine  soul  has  for  and  with 
ideas  detains  him  with  those  phases  of  truth  which 


226    PATHS    TO    THE    CITY    OF    GOD 

disclose  themselves  in  the  mystic's  meditations. 
Each  is  the  victim  of  grand  powers.  But  how  awful 
the  ruin  which  comes  to  a  man  whose  splendid 
faculties  of  thought  wear  themselves  out  and  become 
weak  to  appreciate  truth,  through  never  giving  it 
over  to  the  will  that  it  may  embody  itself  in  action. 

And  this  is  the  second  fact  to  which  I  call  your 
attention,  that  the  man  of  vision,  the  meditative  soul, 
is  sure  to  render  himself  incapable  of  true  vision  and 
of  worthy  meditations,  whose  life  of  thought  does 
not  express  itself  in  a  life  of  work. 

How  surely  Shakespeare's  Hamlet  grows  to  be 
a  sorrowful  sermon  on  this  proposition.  How  grand 
are  his  ponderings  on  the  things  of  life  and  death, 
until  you  begin  to  see  that  the  truth  of  which  he  was 
at  first  so  sure  and  which  spoke  to  him  so  clearly  of 
its  authority  over  his  life  and  the  lives  of  others, 
has  slipped  out  of  his  skillful  hand,  and  there  he 
stands,  irresolute,  with  no  deed  executed  in  which 
that  truth  had  form  and  in  which  he  became  a 
firmer,  surer-footed  man.  After  all,  belief  lies  at  the 
core  of  character.  Around  one's  beliefs  must  gather 
the  ideas  and  experiences  which  solidify  into  man- 
liness. And  this  power  of  belief,  this  ability  to  take 
a  proposition  of  truth  and  make  it  a  vital  center 
for  other  as  yet  unperceived  truths  to  come  to  and 
cling  to,  is  destroyed,  whenever,  as  in  his  case,  the 
will  stands  off  uninfluenced  and  inert.  The  very 
power  of  believing  truth  is  destroyed  by  never 
heartily  going  along  with  one's  belief  in  the  path  of 
duty  which  opens  up.    We  live  by  truth  living  in  us; 


ACTION  227 

we  die  when  truth  waits  so  long  outside  the  warm 
activity  of  our  life  that  it  freezes  to  death.  Here  is 
the  fruitful  source  of  all  really  dangerous  skepticism. 
Unobeyed  visions  lie  back  behind  our  dubious  weak- 
ness; unincarnated  truths  like  unquiet  ghosts  stand 
in  the  gloom  behind,  haunt  it,  and  make  horrid  our 
powerless  incertitude.  Every  doubting  man  who 
says,  where  and  what  is  truth,  at  some  time  knew 
enough  truth  which  he  did  not  obey,  enough  truth 
with  which  his  amused  intellect  toyed  until  he  was 
tired  out  and  it  had  died — enough  truth  to  have  fed 
him  by  his  taking  it  into  his  character  through 
action.  But  not  having  turned  its  power  upon  his 
life,  it  has  become  even  unlovely.  Here  is  a  little 
streamlet  which  comes  dancing  along  with  the  glory 
of  the  sun  upon  its  tiny  bosom.  It  is  so  interesting 
and  bright — so  much  more  interesting  and  beauti- 
ful than  the  quiet,  homely  wheel  that  needs  to  be 
turned  down  yonder,  and  that  it  would  turn  if  only  it 
might  get  to  it — that  the  entranced  discoverer  dams 
it  up  and  gazes  upon  its  delayed  power  day  by  day. 
By  and  by,  it  either  overflows  the  garden  of  his  life 
or  it  becomes  a  scum-covered,  unlovely,  unhealthy 
pool,  and  sends  its  miasma  into  him  who  has  stopped 
it;  and  while  he  dies  the  stream  dies,  and  the  wheel 
is  unturned.  That  is  the  bane  and  curse  of  a  life 
in  which  truth  is  stopped  in  mere  meditation. 
Duties  are  never  done,  and  the  truth,  for  which  the 
doing  of  duty  waited,  becomes  untrue.  The  truth 
which  the  soul  believed  once  it  believes  no  longer. 
Truth  is  truth  only  to  the  mind  of  God  out  of 


228    PATHS    TO    THE    CITY    OF    GOD 

whom  it  comes,  and  to  the  mind  of  man  to  whom  it 
is  sent.  And  there  is  nothing  more  awful  on  this 
earth  than  the  refusing  to  transmit  the  truth  which 
comes  to  us — nothing  more  terrible  in  itself  and  in 
its  consequences  than  a  quiescent,  contemplative 
mood  of  meditation  which  involves  disobedience 
unto  the  heavenly  vision.  I  doubt  not  the  fact  is 
evident  to  you  that  the  effect  on  the  dreamer  who 
becomes  a  speculator  and  then  a  skeptic  without 
action  would  not  be  so  disastrous,  if  it  were  not  that 
character  itself  is  truth  which  the  affections  have 
loved,  and  which  the  will  has  seized  and  turned  into 
a  personal,  living,  acting  reality.  A  man  feeds  on 
truth  only  by  doing  it.  It  never  discloses  its  power 
until  he  risks  his  life  with  it.  He  really  believes  it, 
only  as  he  does  do  it.  He  gets  its  real  meaning,  only 
as  he  knows  that  it  is  not  his  truth  exclusively,  but 
all  men's  truth,  that  it  never  can  be  in  any  full  sense 
his  truth  at  all  until  he  obeys  it;  that  its  colors  of 
beauty  and  suggestiveness  will  come  out  as  he  gives 
it  some  of  the  many  noble  forms  in  which  it  may  be 
living  truth  on  the  earth.  It  is  this  fact  about  the 
close  relationship  of  human  life  and  truth  which 
lies  at  the  bottom  of  the  fact  that  a  man  who  does 
not  give  form  to  the  truth  which  he  does  believe 
loses  his  capacity  for  belief.  This  fact  is  also  under 
Schiller's  famous  saying  about  the  tragedy  of 
"Hamlet:"  "That  it  is  intended  to  show  that  a  calcu- 
lating consideration  which  exhausts  all  the  relations 
and  possible  consequences  of  a  deed,  must  cripple 
the  power  of  acting." 


ACTION  229 

•*  The  time  is  out  of  joint,  O  cursed  spite 
That  I  was  ever  born  to  set  it  right." 

Hamlet  says,  in  pitiful  consciousness,  that  his 
intellectual  processes  have  made  him  powerless  in 
the  presence  of  truth  and  duty.  He  cannot  trans- 
mute meditation  into  action. 

Behold  St,  Paul  with  his  vision!  Instantly  he 
recognizes  its  authority  and  soon  he  is  at  work  with 
the  veiy  same  old  hard  world  which  is  "out  of 
joint,"  helping  "to  set  it  right."  His  truth  begins 
to  strike  realities.  It  conies  in  real  form,  and  lives 
in  the  lives  of  men.  And  how  he  grows  into  ever 
stronger,  broader  manhood!  No  weak  trifler  is  he 
with  either  thought  or  work.  No  entranced  rambler 
amongst  clouds;  no  sordid  earth-worm  in  the  world 
— ^but  a  great,  brave,  hearty  man  does  he  become. 
"I  had  a  vision" — "I  was  not  disobedient  unto  the 
heavenly  vision."  A  thousand  times  he  must,  with 
his  dialectical  skill  and  rationalizing  powers,  have 
been  tempted  to  stop  and  to  contemplate  the  possible 
failures  and  difficulties  which  his  truth  was  to  en- 
counter. But  he  was  no  Hamlet ;  and  at  that  critical 
moment  when  he  mused  over  his  truth  and  the  fire 
began  to  burn,  the  flame  was  pushed  by  his  will 
under  the  boiler  and  the  wheels  of  life  began  to 
revolve.  The  time  to  strike  is  when  the  iron  is  hot 
with  lying  quietly  in  the  fire  of  thought — but  it  is 
the  time  to  strike. 

"  And  bless'd  are  those 
Whose  blood  and  judgment  are  so  well  commingled, 
That  they  are  not  a  pipe  for  fortune's  finger 
To  sound  what  stop  she  please." 


230    PATHS    TO    THE    CITY    OF    GOD 

Every  Hamlet  knows  at  last  the  sorrow  with 
which  poor  Coleridge  once  said:  "I  am  Hamlet; 
whenever  a  new  duty  is  presented  to  me  my  first 
impulse  is  to  shrink  from  the  performance  of  it." 

Paul  never  lost  his  vision  by  his  action.  Nay! 
the  life  of  action  is  never  deep  and  worthy  save  with 
the  life  of  meditation  behind  it — to  which  it  is  al- 
ways turning ;  the  life  of  meditation  is  never  health- 
ful and  manly,  save  with  the  life  of  action  in  front 
of  it — into  which  it  is  always  going.  Paul's  life 
in  prison-cell,  in  long  journey,  in  silent  suffering,  on 
the  stormy  wave,  gave  him  over  again  and  again  to 
meditation  upon  that  opened  sky  which  revealed  his 
Master  to  him  on  the  way  to  Damascus,  It  had 
enough  in  it  to  make  him  a  diseased  muser,  a  cranky 
dreamer,  and  a  ruminating  visionary;  but  action  kept 
him  healthful;  doing  put  into  all  his  dreaming  its 
common  sense.  And  so,  as  the  years  fled  away  into 
the  past,  the  vision,  instead  of  vanishing  and  passing 
away,  still  abided  in  ever-brightening,  ever-inspiring 
presence  of  the  ideal,  growing  more  beautiful  as  his 
work  caught  its  splendor  and  transformed  it ;  grow- 
ing at  last  to  be  the  majestic  symbol  of  the  open 
heaven.  "I  had  a  vision — I  was  not  disobedient 
unto  the  heavenly  vision." 

"Wist  ye  not  that  I  must  be  about  My  Father's 
business  ?"  said  the  complete  man  Jesus,  when  yet  a 
musing  child.  "I  must  work  the  works  of  Him  that 
sent  Me" — so  spake  the  greatest  and  most  ideal  life. 

Once  more  then  let  us  turn  to  Christ.  "Ye  are 
complete  in  Him."    As  the  mere  doer  must  let  Christ 


ACTION  231 

live  His  perfect  life  in  his  imperfection,  so  must  the 
mere  thinker  let  this  same  perfecting  Christ  live  in 
his  imperfection,  if  each  would  have  a  divine 
symmetry  and  a  Christ-like  power.  Truth  never 
waits  at  a  complete  Christian's  door  to  be  clothed 
with  the  reality  of  action.  Action  never  lingers  upon 
the  complete  Christian's  fingers  to  be  inspired  by 
truth.  Dreaming  and  doing;  thinking  and  working; 
meditating  and  acting — each  making  the  other  true, 
each  exists  in  the  unity  of  the  soul's  life  and  each 
keeps  the  other  strong  and  pure.  O  for  that  mani- 
festation in  us  of  the  perfecting  grace  of  God ! 


XII 
CHRISTIANITY   AND   WOMAN 

(Preached  Easter  Night  on  the  Occasion  of  the  Departure  of 
Women  Missionaries  to  the  Orient) 

"  Blessed  art  thou  among  wofnen."    Luke  i.  28. 

"  Now  there  stood  by  the  cross  of  Jesus  His  mother." 
John  xtx.  2j. 

"  When  Jesus  was  risen.  He  appeared  first  to  Mary 
Magdalene."    Mark  xvi.  9, 

IN  a  Christian  temple  out  of  which  so  many 
women  are  now  going  to  spread  the  glad  tidings 
of  their  religion,  and  from  which  so  many  will 
go  to  take  no  small  part  in  the  affairs  of  the  nation ; 
in  an  age,  also,  when  current  reviews  agitate  the 
question  as  to  what  agnosticism — that  intellectual 
suicide  which  renders  impossible  all  religion — has 
for  woman,  in  gift  or  demand,  it  seems  well  that  on 
Easter  night,  we  spend  an  hour  with  those  considera- 
tions, which,  arising  out  of  sober  history  and  the 
characteristics  of  her  mind,  should  not  only  endear 
Christianity  to  woman,  but  enforce  the  duty  of  her 
highest  devotion. 

The  lesson  from  these  three  texts  is  one.  The 
first:  "Blessed  art  thou  among  women,"  was 
spoken  to  Mary.  It  was  the  announcement  that  the 
divine  shall  live  in  the  human.  The  Angel  of  the 
Annunciation  is  the  genius  of  the  past,  present,  and 

232 


CHRISTIANITY   AND    WOMAN    233 

future,  whispering  to  Mary  and  her  sisters  in  all 
times  the  fact  that  is  the  core  of  Christianity,  and 
the  greatness  of  her  duties  as  Christianity  enjoins 
them  upon  her. 

The  second  text :  "Now  there  stood  by  the  cross 
of  Jesus  His  mother,"  is  part  of  the  account  of 
Christ's  death.  The  spirit  that  in  woman  stands 
near  the  cross  is  born  of  the  highest  duty  and  purest 
privilege.  These  are  such  because  to  woman,  by  the 
constitution  of  her  mind,  the  higher  truths  of  re- 
ligion are  more  manifest. 

The  third :  "When  Jesus  was  risen,  He  appeared 
first  to  Mary  Magdalene,"  is  another  word  most 
logical  and  poetically  suggestive.  Naturally  as  the 
mother,  with  the  other  women,  stands  near  the 
cross,  does  the  risen  Christ  appear,  not  to  a  Peter 
or  a  John,  but  to  a  Mary  Magdalene. 

It  is  fashionable  in  certain  quarters  for  women 
to  assert  that  they  care  little  for  a  Christianity  which 
inspires  missionary  service.  Skepticism  among 
women  usually  takes  the  form  of  amateurish  cham- 
pionship of  faded  faiths.  It  is  not  only  decaying 
conservatism,  but  crude  and  unintelligent  affectation 
which  refuses  to  believe  that  any  new  ideal  of 
womanhood  may  have  been  or  may  be  blessed  by 
Christianity.  On  the  other  hand,  rising  out  of 
history  comes  its  muse  to  remind  woman  that  no 
revival  of  dead  philosophies  can  divorce  the  lofty 
position  of  woman  to-day  from  its  origin  in  the 
conquering  spirit  of  Christianity.  It  is  easy  to  hear 
a  woman  of  agnostic  tendencies   repeat  the  rich 


234    PATHS    TO    THE    CITY    OF    GOD 

verses  of  Swinburne  in  praise  of  the  age  of  Alcibi- 
ades;  and  it  is  the  fashion  of  a  superficial  skepticism 
everywhere  to  fondle  with  the  past  as  though  the 
literary  woman  had  lost  her  destiny  there  and  it 
might  be  found  by  returning  to  the  spot.  These 
people  would  live  where  they  could 

"  Have  glimpses  that  would  make  them  less  forlorn, 
Have  sight  of  Proteus  rising  from  the  sea. 
Or  hear  old  Triton  blow  his  wreathed  horn." 

The  very  language  they  use  is  heavy  with  a  sugges- 
tion. Think  of  it.  In  an  age  with  a  mythological 
Proteus  or  Triton,  instead  of  nature  governed  by 
laws  made  known  by  science,  nature  was  ruled  by  a 
poetic  superstition ;  and  must  it  not  be  that  the  same 
dense  cloud  gathered  over  the  head  of  woman? 
When  men  looked  into  the  sea  for  Neptune,  or 
Venus,  and  into  the  woods  for  Pan,  the  courtesan 
was  on  a  level  with  the  wife,  and  Aristotle  was 
bending  his  genius  to  prove  the  glory  of  slavery  and 
to  show  that  women  were  of  an  "inferior  kind." 
Woman  shared  more  heavily  than  man  in  the 
base  character  of  the  times.  They  were  soulless,  but 
full  of  agnosticism — full  of  the  mood  of  mind  that 
says :  'T  do  not  know,  I  cannot  know  about  destiny, 
who  I  am,  or  what  I  am."  The  critic,  in  a  recent 
English  periodical,  who  prophesies  so  much  for 
woman  when  Christianity  is  put  aside  and  the  know- 
nothing  creed  is  adopted,  can,  if  she  will,  judge  of 
the  future  by  the  past  experience  of  the  sex.  History 
furnishes  two  pictures  of  agnosticism  and  woman. 


CHRISTIANITY    AND    WOMAN    235 

The  time  of  no  religion  in  Greece  was  well 
understood  by  itself.  Pan  was  dead;  the  oracles 
were  dumb.  Nobody  had  any  belief.  Agnosticism 
was  everywhere.  Where  was  woman?  Ask  not 
Themistocles,  for  he  was  too  impure  to  estimate 
woman's  true  place  in  human  life;  ask  not  the  peer- 
less Pericles,  for  he  was  untrue  to  the  law  of  virtue. 
Ask  Demosthenes.  He  says :  "We  have  hetserae 
for  our  pleasure  and  wives  to  bear  us  children  and 
to  care  for  our  households."  At  that  hour,  the  most 
distinguished  evil  woman  of  the  time  stood  as  a 
model  for  Praxiteles  and  promised  to  rebuild  the 
walls  of  Thebes  if  her  name  might  be  inscribed  upon 
them.  Agnosticism  was,  however,  in  full  power. 
The  quotations  from  the  Greek  which  delight  our 
modern  paganism  and  please  our  ignorance  were 
fresher  then  than  they  are  now  when  our  ambitious 
ladies  repeat  them,  dreaming  that  they  are  new. 
These  abstractions  did  not  uplift  womanhood.  The 
Greek  woman  was  kept  under  watch  until  marriage, 
shut  out  from  all  generous  education,  took  no  part 
whatever  in  employments  of  men,  was  unknown  in 
that  alert  public  life  and  in  the  rapidly-making 
history  of  the  country,  for  she  had  held  before  her 
Plato's  idea.  He  represented  a  state  as  wholly 
disorganized,  where  slaves  are  disobedient  to  their 
masters,  and  where  wives  are  on  an  equality  with 
their  husbands.  "Is  there  a  human  being,"  said 
Socrates,  "with  whom  you  talk  less  than  with  your 
wife?"  This  great  philosopher  gave  the  shameless 
Theodosia  improved  plans  as  to  how  to  pursue  the 


236    PATHS    TO    THE    CITY    OF    GOD 

wretched  trade  of  selling  her  virtue.  A  Greek  wife 
did  not  eat  at  the  same  table  with  her  husband, 
except  when  he  had  no  better  company. 

And  these  were  of  the  best  men  of  Greece. 
What  think  you  of  the  crowd?  Agnosticism  did 
nothing  for  you  then;  it  has  nothing  to  offer  now. 
The  highest  faith  of  Greece  created  the  Antigone  of 
Sophocles  whose  chief  speech  made  this  ideal  figure 
only  a  prophecy  of  a  higher  womanhood  than  Greece 
could  or  at  least  did  produce  in  flesh  and  blood. 
While  Sophocles  dreamed  this  dream,  woman  in 
Greece  was  a  slave. 

But  history  has  another  illustration  of  the  fact 
that  the  philosophy  of  life,  which  knows  nothing 
of  destiny  or  expectation,  has  not  been  efficient  to 
bless  woman.  In  Rome,  agnosticism  was  the  creed 
of  philosopher  and  slave,  and  if  we  look  upon  the 
scene,  we  see  agnosticism — ^bolder  than  any  of 
England,  more  complete  than  any  of  America — 
standing  by  and  beholding  without  a  protest  the 
infamy  and  wrong  that  were  visited  upon  woman. 
Note  the  modernness  of  that  agnosticism.  "I  do  not 
know,"  said  peasant  and  priest,  concerning  who  he 
was  and  zvhither  he  was  tending.  Said  Seneca : 
"All  that  ignoble  rabble  of  the  gods  which  the 
superstition  of  the  ages  has  heaped  up,  we  shall 
adore  in  such  a  way  as  to  remember  that  their 
worship  belongs  to  custom  rather  than  to  reality." 
Cicero,  like  a  modern  agnostic,  says  in  private  that 
it  is  absurd  to  believe  these  things,  though  it  would 
be  dangerous  to  take  the  negative  side  in  a  public 


CHRISTIANITY    AND    WOMAN    237 

auditory.  Pliny  regrets  that  matters  of  destiny 
"embarrass  improvident  mortals,"  and  the  modern 
agnostic  could  say  with  him  that  "there  is  nothing 
more  proud  or  wretched  than  man."  Caesar  said  in 
the  Senate:  "Beyond  this  life  there  is  no  place  for 
either  trouble  or  joy."  On  the  sepulchers  were 
written  the  words:  "To  Eternal  Sleep." 

Is  that  a  better  faith  for  woman  than  the  old 
gospel  story,  that  the  risen  Jesus  should  first  appear 
to  a  Mary  Magdalene  ?  The  Greek  Sapphos  and  the 
Roman  Cornelias  were  joined  by  the  Deborahs  of 
Israel  in  a  want  that  Christianity  alone  could  satisfy. 
For  ancient  life,  not  only  in  the  mind  of  man,  but 
in  woman's  heart  also,  was  motiveless  and  unin- 
spired. 

Let  us  go  to  the  moment  of  the  finest  agnosticism. 
What  is  true  of  it?  What  is  agnosticism  doing  for 
woman?  As  early  as  131  b.  c.  Metellus  Mace- 
donicus,  who  was  held  in  general  admiration  for  his 
honorable  domestic  life,  in  a  speech  described  mar- 
riage as  an  oppressive  burden  which  citizens  would 
gladly  be  clear  of.  More,  Cato  did  not  hesitate  to 
part  from  his  wife,  with  the  consent  of  her  father, 
and  to  hand  her  over  to  his  friend,  Hortensius,  and 
then,  after  his  death,  to  marry  her  again.  Cicero 
divorced  his  wife,  with  whom  he  had  lived  for 
thirty  years,  and  married  a  young  woman  of  wealth. 
Her  also  he  soon  divorced.  Seneca  speaks  of  what 
he  calls  illustrious  and  noble  women  who  reckoned 
time  not  by  the  number  of  consuls  but  by  the  number 
of  their  successive  husbands.    Mommsen  tells  us  that 


238    PATHS    TO   THE    CITY    OF    GOD 

only  a  scandal  altogether  exceptional  created  any 
notice;  a  judicial  interference  seemed  improbable. 
And  all  this  with  agnosticism  at  its  height  in  Rome ! 

Not  only,  as  Michelet  says,  had  "dejection  taken 
possession  of  men's  souls,"  but  "a  deadly  inertia 
seized  the  whole  state."  Woman,  beneath  all  her 
shame,  felt  with  man  a  law  of  being  which  she  had 
no  power  to  fulfill,  gleams  of  an  ideal  she  could  not 
reach,  hints  of  an  immortal  life  which  she  had  no 
thought  to  separate  from  fear.  But,  when  the  first 
Easter  dawned,  the  Light  and  Life  of  man  was  the 
Light  and  Life  of  woman.  Max  Miiller  agrees  that 
Christianity  first  spoke  the  word  humanity.  Hence- 
forth the  same  ineffable  glory  shone  in  the  face  of 
woman  and  man.  But  Christianity  came  also  as  a 
motive  power.  Every  new  motive  power  that  Jesus' 
life,  character,  death,  doctrine,  put  under  the  falling 
life  of  man,  came  to  her  with  that  added  power 
which  her  peculiar  nature  created  in  them. 

Woman  was  brought  near  the  cross  of  Jesus  by 
a  natural  gravitation.  In  turn,  Christian  art  has  a 
Madonna  and  a  Mater  Dolorosa.  The  religion  of 
Christ,  as  the  divine  passion  of  self-sacrifice,  touched 
the  soul  of  woman  in  its  sanctum  sanctorum;  for 
woman's  glory  is  her  power  of  tonscious  self- 
renunciation.  The  religion  of  Christ — as  loyalty 
to  the  world  through  the  love  of  Love  Divine,  whom 
men  call  God — carried  to  woman's  heart  new  music 
for  its  throbbings;  for  woman's  other  glory  is  her 
power  of  divine  emotion.  The  religion  of  Christ, 
as  a  sentiment  revealing  the  Kingdom  of  God  to  the 


CHRISTIANITY   AND    WOMAN    239 

innocent  instincts  rather  than  to  the  involved  fears 
of  the  seeking  soul,  came  to  her  nature  as  a  chariot 
in  which  God  rode,  for  woman's  other  glory  is  that 
she  looks  out,  not  so  often  through  the  soiled 
windows  of  reasoning,  as  out  of  the  roofless  in- 
tuitions, into  the  blue  mystery  above  her.  The 
religion  of  Christ,  as  a  mercy  to  a  sunken  race,  as 
the  blossom  of  divine  affection  on  the  stalk  of  God's 
patience  with  man,  as  the  reign  of  gentleness  and 
love,  came  to  her  tired  soul  like  a  rest  floating  from 
paradise;  for  woman's  other  glory  is  that  with  her, 
mercy  fails  not,  love  dies  not,  patience  is  everlast- 
ing, and  gentleness  is  a  use  of  omnipotence.  Clad 
with  all  these,  this  religion,  which  woman  is  asked  to 
give  up,  came  to  her  at  Rome.  With  all  these — 
yea,  with  more;  for  to  make  these  ideas  free  and 
powerful,  to  reach  her  heart,  Jesus  threw  above  the 
head  of  woman,  instead  of  an  Olympus  with  a 
tyrant  and  libertine  for  a  god,  a  "new  heaven," 
with  His  Father  as  His  God  and  her  God.  When,  as 
a  consequence,  the  "new  earth"  came,  the  equality 
of  man  and  woman  came  also — for  when  the 
Pharisees  asked  Him:  "Is  it  lawful  to  put  away  a 
man's  wife  for  any  cause?" — He  made  answer: 
"Have  ye  not  read  that  He  which  made  them  at  the 
beginning  made  them  male  and  female  ?"  He  would 
not  divide  humanity  with  its  destiny.  In  the  shadow 
of  Roman  eagles  and  on  the  soil  of  Judaism,  He 
rebuked  them  both,  when  He  instituted  a  religion, 
which  in  Himself  gathered  and  made  the  special 
qualities  of  woman  divine.    Acting  upon  it,  He  said 


7 

240    PATHS    TO    THE    CITY    OF    GOD 

to  woman  in  sin :  "Go  and  sin  no  more."  He  called 
to  the  woman  in  righteousness  to  enter  a  kingdom 
of  usefulness  and  duty  of  which  none  but  He  had 
dreamed. 

And  now,  what  a  change !  No  Homer  can  make 
that  type  of  womanhood  represented  in  Helen  seem 
other  than  stained  in  the  white  light  shed  on  the 
world  by  a  holy  Mary.  Helen,  the  lovely  daughter 
of  Zeus  and  Leda,  with  her  shameless  sin,  is  as  far 
from  the  virgin  mother  as  is  the  supreme  god  and 
king  of  the  Greek  Olympus  from  the  Father  in 
heaven.  Virgil's  Dido  has  gone  with  Jupiter  to 
make  room  for  a  Maid  of  Orleans  with  her  conse- 
crated sword.  To-day,  however,  we  see  that  woman 
has  moved  in  the  chariot  of  religion  away  from  the 
Helen  over  whose  beauty  Greece  was  bleeding,  only 
so  far  as  Christianity  has  carried  man  from  the 
mighty  Zeus  and  the  lovely  Aphrodite.  The  earth  of 
humanity  has  improved  only  as  the  heavens  over 
man  and  woman  have  yielded  to  widening,  deepen- 
ing, and  purifying  thoughts.  Woman,  looking  to 
Christianity  from  Greece  and  Rome,  saw  the  new 
heavens  and  the  new  earth — for  in  that  order 
do  they  come — "wherein  dwelleth  righteousness." 
With  the  worship  of  Venus  must  go  the  elevation  of 
the  courtesan.  With  the  entrance  of  a  new  divinity 
to  the  heavens,  must  come  a  new  humanity  to  earth. 
Let  the  womankind  of  our  time  learn  the  lesson  of 
her  duty  to  this  religion.  Let  her  teach  it  and  its 
story  to  her  daughters  and  sons.  When  men  fail 
and  the  cross  is  lifted  against  the  black  sky,  let 


CHRISTIANITY    AND    WOMAN    211 

woman  be  near.  In  all  Christian  work,  in  sending 
the  gospel  to  woman,  in  carrying  its  hope  to  the  fire- 
side, woman  shall  not  faint. 

The  religion  of  Jesus  comes  as  the  dream  and 
truth  of  the  heart;  and  woman's  power  nestles  there. 
When  men  falter,  woman,  in  some  Mary  Magdalene, 
must  steal  to  the  grave  in  the  morning,  as  darkness 
turns  to  gray;  and  woman  in  reform,  in  achieve- 
ment, in  hope,  must  run  before  a  disheartened  race, 
to  cry,  with  all  the  sweetness  which  a  religion  of 
the  heart  can  give:  "He  is  risen!"  A  woman,  in 
that  hour  before  daybreak,  ran  to  a  new  Poland, 
when,  as  the  wife  of  a  ruler,  she  caught  the  risen 
glory  of  Jesus,  bending  before  all  others  at  that 
sepulcher  of  His  which  we  call  the  Dark  Ages.  A 
woman  once  heard  in  Russia  the  voices  of  resurrec- 
tion, before  all  others,  and  that  Mary  Magdalene 
ran  and  told  Russia  that  for  her  Christ  had  risen. 
Woman  beheld  the  forsaken  grave  first,  as  Christian- 
ity rose  out  of  the  tomb  in  which,  for  ten  centuries, 
civilization  had  slept  through  the  Middle  Ages. 
Chivalry  caught  the  word  from  her,  and  through 
all  the  mistakes  of  fanaticism  the  ideal  woman  has 
led  the  world.  Says  Draper :  "Clotilda,  the  Queen 
of  the  Franks,  brought  over  to  the  faith  her 
husband,  Clovis.  Bertha,  the  Queen  of  Kent,  and 
Gisella,  the  Queen  of  Hungary,  led  the  way  in  their 
respective  countries."  Greater  than  monks  or  lonely 
priests,  were  the  captive  women  taken  from  the 
South  of  Europe  in  war,  to  civilize  the  North.  The 
Greek  wife,  mentioned  by  Xenophon,  who  tended 


U2    PATHS    TO    THE    CITY    OF    GOD 

her  sick  slaves,  was  a  prophetess  of  that  womanhood 
which  would  produce  a  St.  Perpetua  for  martyrdom, 
a  Joan  of  Arc  for  sacrificial  love  of  liberty,  a 
Florence  Nightingale  for  tender  charity.  Christian- 
ity "came  not  to  destroy,  but  to  fulfill"  the  life  of 
head  and  heart;  and  with  man's  new  career  in  St. 
Francis,  Melanchthon,  and  John  Eliot,  instead  of 
Marcus  Aurelius  and  Cicero,  came  woman's  future, 
in  which  Hector's  Andromache  and  Scipio's  Amelia, 
and  Seneca's  mother,  were  exchanged  for  a  woman- 
hood producing  all  that  they  achieved  and  more. 
A  new  type  was  born.  Here  came  a  servant  girl 
like  Blandina  with  her  chair  of  fire;  a  noble  mother- 
hood which  should  be  maternal  to  the  careers  of 
such  saints  as  Chrysostom,  Augustine,  Basil,  and 
Gregory,  and  kings  like  Constantine  or  Valentinian, 
and  a  sister  who  should  mold  an  empire,  as  did  that 
of  the  young  Theodosius.  Christianity  transfigured 
all  the  feminine  virtues  in  the  face  of  Jesus,  and  thus 
not  only  revealed  the  future  of  woman,  but  the 
future  of  man  as  these  should  touch  them.  The  new 
woman  came,  and  she  brought  the  new  man. 

Christianity  has  been  called  a  new  enthusi- 
asm for,  and  the  enthusiasm  of,  humanity.  It 
must  therefore  not  only  propose  to  re-create 
woman's  life,  but  it  proposes  to  turn  the  power  of 
the  re-created  womanhood  upon  the  slow  world.  It 
not  only  found  new  powers  within  woman,  but  it 
found  new  uses  for  all  her  powers  latent  and  mani- 
fest. And  so,  along  with  Christianity,  there  came 
Mary  and  Martha,  Lydia  and  Elizabeth,  Euodia  and 


CHRISTIANITY   AND    WOMAN    243 

Syntyche.  So  long  as  Christianity  aimed  at  a  uni- 
versal victory — at  the  refinement  and  salvation  of  a 
race,  rather  than  of  a  section — it  must  gather  to 
itself  not  only  the  yearnings  and  loves  that  might 
have  gone  unfulfilled  in  a  Zenobia,  or  an  Aspasia, 
but  it  would  unite  into  effective  power  to  turn  the 
wheels  of  the  world,  the  tears  and  prayers  that  might 
issue  from  the  penitence  of  a  Magdalene,  or  rise 
from  the  enthusiasm  of  a  Flacilla. 

And  we,  who  hold  to  a  pure  protestantism,  may 
well  stop  here  and  behold  attentively  the  picture 
which  the  Roman  church  has  stretched  before  the 
children  of  men — the  Holy  Virgin,  Mary,  the 
Mother  of  God.  I  think  that  in  the  whole  history 
of  the  myth-making  and  legend-growing  soul  of 
man,  this  divine  portrait  is  without  a  peer. 
Christianity  might  welcome  the  comparison  that 
must  have  been  suggested  at  Ephesus,  for  the  "Hail 
Mary"  of  a  Roman  Catholic  laborer  is  a  long  way  in 
advance  of  the  cry  that  used  to  ascend  from  the 
dull-eyed  populace  at  Ephesus:  "Great  is  Diana 
of  the  Ephesians !"  Mary  has  won  from  our  coarse 
humanity  and  unto  her  adoration,  something  which 
the  Diana  of  that  glorious  paganism  could  not 
achieve,  and  the  phenomenon  of  the  worship  of  the 
Virgin  is  very  impressive  to  the  student  of  myths 
and  facts.  She  has  gathered  to  her  limned  beauty 
the  brushes  of  every  genius,  and  caught  in  her  sweet 
face  the  chastened  splendors  of  every  clime.  To 
paint  her,  religion  has  seized  the  brain,  heart,  and 
hand  of  art;  and  that  fleet  genius  whose  sandals 


244    PATHS    TO    THE    CITY    OF    GOD 

were  ne'er  delayed,  as  it  flew  from  some  encroach- 
ing sovereignty,  has  grown  tractable,  until,  raised 
upon  wings  not  its  own,  it  has  learned  a  new  magic 
of  color  from  the  contagious  charm  of  a  divine 
theme. 

Out  of  the  new  significance  given  to  woman,  the 
Holy  Mother  has  appeared,  and  Art  and  Religion 
bow  before  her.  Our  age  of  analysis  goes  up  to  the 
lovely  myth  and  takes  it  to  pieces ;  but  much  that  is 
substantial  yet  remains.  With  the  man  of  scientific 
habits,  the  cloud  about  the  Virgin  in  the  Annuncia- 
tion of  Raphael,  rises  naturally  out  of  the  unsounded 
depths  of  human  nature,  and  lies  not  as  a  glory,  but 
rather  as  a  film,  over  the  eye  of  reason.  The  adora- 
tion which  genius,  under  the  charm  of  religion,  has 
paid  to  the  young  wife  of  Joseph,  to  a  student  of 
legend  may  be  only  an  evidence  of  how  the  human 
soul,  luxuriant  as  it  is  in  the  growth  of  its  myths, 
innocent  of  the  incarnations  which  it  makes  of  its 
own  fancies,  is  caught  in  the  delightful  illusion 
which  they  create.  Cold  rationalism  hears  within 
the  soul  no  "Ave  Maria"  save  as  this  illusion  marks 
the  cessation  of  clear  intellectual  processes.  Yes, 
but  the  fact  is  deeper  than  all  this.  Between  credu- 
lous Catholicism  and  a  negative  rationalism,  we  must 
stand. 

We  find  in  the  phenomenon  of  the  worship  of  the 
Virgin  the  unconsciously  accomplished  dream  of 
woman.  Here  first  appeared  in  our  chronology  the 
new  man.  Just  as  when  the  Lutherans  broke  into 
Parmegiano's  workshop  at  Rome,  they  were  awed 


CHRISTIANITY    AND    WOMAN    245 

by  the  tranquil  majesty  of  the  Virgin  on  his  easel,  so 
the  true  conception  of  womanhood  will  ever  turn 
back  the  fierce  revolutionary  forces  in  the  ferment  of 
our  modern  time.  We  are  passing  under  the  rule  of 
Madonna  Assunta,  whenever  the  woman-qualities 
are  enthroned  above  our  hard  barbaric  masculinity. 
The  Madonna  is  that  bright  and  new  conception  of 
woman,  re-created  and  re-creating,  a  conception  of 
Christianity  glorified  in  a  light  borrowed  from  the 
realms  of  imagination,  and  limned  against  a  back- 
ground built  of  the  accumulated  shadows  in  the 
flight  of  sixty  centuries.  In  the  short  history  of  the 
dogma  perpetuated  in  the  face  of  the  Madonna  is 
seen  the  natural  alliance  of  Christianity  and  woman. 
If  it  is  allowable  to  think  of  Dante's  Beatrice  as  the 
fair  spirit  that  so  attracted  his  genius  as  to  begin  a 
literary  revolution,  it  must  be  granted  that  the  ideal 
woman  of  the  Middle  Ages  wrought  out  of  a  chaos 
in  darkness  impenetrable  a  new  doctrine  for  the  race. 
Amid  all  that  rank  dogmatism,  bolstered  up  by 
ambitious  ecclesiastics,  unto  all  that  stubborn  despot- 
ism kept  in  place  by  feudal  barons,  came  the  warm 
hand  of  the  ideal  woman,  to  make  the  heart  of 
chivalry  flutter  with  an  energy  which  reached  be- 
yond the  woman  and  the  man,  even  unto  a  renewed 
humanity.  Gradually  that  ideal  woman  gathered 
her  streaming  glories  into  a  conception,  which,  under 
the  spell  of  devotion,  became  incarnate.  The  Virgin 
Mary,  having  grown  divine  in  doctrines  and  coun- 
cils, rose  from  the  brightness  that  human  nature  had 
lent  to  her,  at  the  council  of  Ephesus,  into  that 


246    PATHS    TO    THE    CITY    OF    GOD 

supernal  beauty  which  the  ideal  woman  gathers 
from  the  heart  of  the  race.  In  her  beauty,  grace,  pa- 
tience, mercy,  love — the  constituents  which  have  been 
maternal  to  the  progress  of  humanity — woman's 
traits  are  embodied  for  an  eternal  intercession. 

Truly  have  the  millions  touched,  through  a 
superstition,  the  hands  of  a  great  truth.  Earth's 
Madonna  is  woman,  made  divine  in  inspiration  and 
work  through  Christ.  Woman  must  bear  Him  to 
the  world  again,  in  that  rich  second  coming,  through 
a  renewed  humanity.  The  historian  of  the  Renais- 
sance is  right  in  saying  that  "Titian's  Virgin,  re- 
ceived into  heaven,  soaring  midway  between  the 
archangel  who  descends  to  crown  her  and  the 
apostles  who  yearn  to  follow  her,  is  far  less  a 
Madonna  Assunta  than  the  apotheosis  of  humanity 
conceived  as  a  radiant  mother,"  It  was  a  woman 
whom  the  aspiring  prayers  of  man,  looking  through 
tears,  have  made  the  mother  of  God,  It  was  to  a 
woman  that  the  divine  Saviour  cried :  "Woman, 
behold  thy  son !"  as  John  stood  near  her.  The  new 
conception  of  her  motherhood  made  humanity,  in 
John,  her  child.  It  was  a  woman  who,  early  in  the 
morning,  hastened  to  the  sepulcher  to  find  her  Lord, 
only  as  He  had  risen  from  the  dead.  Civilization 
displays  its  new  powers  first  to  the  intuitive  soul  of 
woman.  The  emotions  are  touched  before  the  in- 
tellect is  convinced.  Even  yet,  Christ  is  risen  first  to 
a  Mary  Magdalene.  In  all  the  future,  then,  shall 
this  history  be  repeated.  The  race  waits  for 
woman's  heart  and  soul,  to  bring  the  second  coming 


CHRISTIANITY    AND    WOMAN    247 

of  the  Christ.  A  motherhood  such  as  His  spiritual 
kingship  may  hint  is  the  high  privilege  and  holy 
necessity  for  woman,  ere  He  comes  again.  "Ave 
Mariar 

Through  the  woe  and  joy  of  womanhood  comes 
the  real  intercessor.  Stricken  with  sorrow  was 
the  fond  mother.  The  woman  about  whom  the 
charm  of  art  has  called  angels  to  make  annunciation 
is  yet  the  Madonna,  the  Mater  Dolorosa.  She  waits 
for  her  son  to  return  to  earth.  She — O,  she  is 
Christian  womanhood.  These  are  days  in  which  the 
prophet  announces  the  birth  of  a  spiritual  Christ. 
In  the  air  there  are  voices!  The  winds  bear  good 
tidings.  Already  the  wise  men  have  begun  to  move 
from  the  East  toward  you.  God  bless  you  as  you 
journey  toward  them.  The  birthday  of  Jesus  is  in 
your  hearts.  A  day — let  it  come,  O  God ! — and  lo, 
Christian  womanhood  and  its  achievement — the  new 
Madonna  and  her  child. 


XIII 
ISAIAH'S   VISION   OF   GOD 

(A  Thanksgiving  Sermon) 

"And  in  the  year  that  King  Uzziah  died  I  saw  the 
Lord  sitting  upon  the  throne,  high  and  lifted  up,  and  His 
train  filled  the  temple.  A  dove  Him  stood  the  Seraphim  : 
each  one  had  six  wings :  with  twain  he  covered  his  face,  and 
with  twain  he  covered  his  feet  and  with  twain  he  did  fiy. 
And  one  cried  unto  another  and  said :  Holy,  holy,  holy,  is 
the  Lord  of  Hosts,  the  whole  earth  is  full  of  His  glory." 
Isaiah  vi.  i,  z,  j. 

TO  speak  frankly  and  at  once  of  my  intention,  I 
wish  to  say  something  which  may  be  of  guid- 
ance and  encouragement  to  young  men  who 
are  entering  upon  their  duties  and  opportunities  in 
American  pubhc  Hfe. 

"Youth,"  said  Beaconsfield,  "is  genius;"  and  I 
am  persuaded  that  we  are  never  so  apt  to  fully  be- 
lieve this  proverb  of  one  who  never  lost  the  brilliant 
romanticism  of  youth,  as  when  we  stop  for  a  little 
time  and  observe  a  man  whose  lips  still  move  with 
the  song  of  youth  while  he  becomes  conscious  of  the 
unfailing  energies  which  circulate  through  earth  and 
heaven  and  command  the  current  of  affairs.  Here 
surely  he  finds  the  secret  of  his  own  life.  He  ever 
after  refers  to  that  date  with  noble  joy.  What  age 
dimly  comes  upon  with  infirm  and  weary  step,  after 
the  laborious  induction  of  years,  proves  itself  to  be 

S48 


ISAIAH'S   VISION    OF    GOD      249 

just  the  truth  that  away  back  there  in  the  morning- 
tide  of  youth  was  resplendent  with  an  unforgotten 
glory.  All  the  careful  massing  of  facts  and  ideas 
which  the  years  shall  make,  can  never  make  less 
authoritative  on  the  instant  or  drive  from  its  sover- 
eign place  the  just  principle  or  fairer  hope  which 
then  made  its  own  appeal.  No  conclusions  arrived 
at  by  exhuming  precedents  or  estimating  statistics 
compare  with  those  which  needed  no  invitation  to 
bring  them  forth,  as  they  played  in  every  sunbeam 
which  touched  the  forehead  of  our  youth.  The 
open-eyed  and  uncontriving  child  who  has  no  end 
to  which  he  would  sacrifice  truth  survives  many 
years.  Enchanted  youth  does  not  seem  to  frighten 
away  the  great  and  simple  truths,  as  does  disen- 
chanted age  with  its  show  of  wisdom  and  unwel- 
coming suspiciousness.  "Heaven  lies  about  us  in 
our  infancy."  Any  relic  of  youth  supplies  a  natural 
optimism — a  sort  of  native  faith  in  the  goodness 
toward  which  the  currents  of  man  and  time  and  God 
run ;  and  it  meets  the  swift-flowing  stream  of  events 
and  truths  with  an  enthusiasm  and  rapidity  of 
thought  and  hope  which  accelerate  the  soul  with  the 
impulse  of  Almighty  God.  Its  hours  are  the  hours 
of  vision;  its  hearing  detects  voices  within  them 
which  soon  become  silent  if  they  are  not  obeyed;  its 
radiant  eyes  behold  outstretched  hands  which  are 
withdrawn  forever  if  they  are  not  grasped.  The 
hard  endeavors  of  age  with  all  its  talent  prove  that 
"Youth  is  genius." 

These  considerations  have,  I  am  bound  to  say, 


g50    PATHS   TO   THE    CITY    OF    GOD 

been  most  engagingly  embodied  in  the  career  of  cer- 
tain men  in  the  poHtics  of  England,  Europe,  and 
America,  Pitt  and  Napoleon  and  Hamilton  have  suc- 
cessors of  a  higher  type  and  a  finer  faith  in  "a  gov- 
ernment of  the  people,  by  the  people,  for  the  people." 
The  success  of  these  men  has  been  a  factor  in  attract- 
ing not  our  least  cultured  and  most  conscienceless 
men  of  youth  into  politics,  but  our  trained  and  stout- 
hearted sons  of  Faith.  The  fortunes  of  righteous- 
ness had  never  such  practical  public  championship. 
We  are  coming  into  a  fresh  and  wholesome  anticipa- 
tion.    Perhaps  v^e  ought  not  to  be  surprised. 

Goodness  is  the  genius  of  greamess.  All  real 
greatness  has  goodness  as  its  eye  and  spirit.  This 
is  God's  universe,  and  God  is  good.  It  has  been 
conceived  in  goodness,  redeemed  in  goodness,  and 
every  essential  movement  within  it  is  toward  good- 
ness. The  soul  which  is  good  has  an  eye  for  good- 
ness, gets  immediate  sight  of  the  current  in  all 
things,  and  if  that  soul  is  thoroughly  good,  it  allies 
itself  with  that  current  and  has  in  itself  the  secret 
of  the  whole.  All  real  greatness  is  good,  in  its 
vision  of  and  in  its  relation  unto  the  goodness  in  the 
universe — the  immanent,  on-going  God.  All  good- 
ness has  within  it  the  beginning,  if  not  the  manifesta- 
tion, of  greatness.  Now,  therefore,  when  youth 
with  imperishable  faith,  which  is  the  very  act  of  a 
personal  goodness,  with  enthusiasm,  which  is  the 
fervor  of  goodness  full  of  hope,  and  with  unworn 
energies,  gets  its  vision  of  goodness  and  finds  that 
goodness  is  personal,  is  God,  it  has  the  loftiest  sort 


ISAIAH'S   VISION    OF    GOD      251 

of  genius;  it  has  penetrated  into  the  universe's 
secret;  and  when  it  alHes  itself  with  that  goodness 
of  which  it  has  had  a  vision,  it  has  a  pledge  of  great- 
ness as  genuine  as  the  very  character  of  Almighty 
God. 

Such  was  the  mental  and  moral  equipment  and 
power — such  was  the  genius  of  Isaiah  of  Jerusalem. 

Isaiah  was  a  Jerusalem  boy  while  the  last  splen- 
did years  of  Uzziah's  reign  were  passing  away.  As 
a  boy,  he  knew  of  its  opening  glories  and  its  early 
triumphs.  He  had  listened  in  his  father's  home  to 
the  oft-repeated  story  of  how  Edom  had  been  lost, 
and  of  the  heroism  with  which  Amaziah  had  suc- 
cessfully stormed  Petra,  seizing  the  hapless  prisoners 
he  had  made  and  hurling  them  from  the  rocky  steeps 
until  they  lay  a  mass  of  bleeding  humanity  before 
their  city's  proud  defense.  He  had,  perhaps,  shared 
the  spirit  of  Amaziah  when  he  challenged  the  allies 
of  Israel :  and  he  had  wept  over  the  memory  of  his 
defeat,  signalized  by  the  dismantled  wall  of  Jeru- 
salem and  the  robbery  of  the  sacred  treasures  of  the 
King's  house  and  the  holy  vessels  of  the  temple. 
He  had,  doubtless,  pondered  over  the  awful  murder 
of  the  King  at  Lachish,  wandered  in  thought  along 
the  bloody  route  by  which  the  royal  corpse  was 
brought  back  to  Jerusalem,  and  stood  back  there 
with  sorrow  and  yet  with  hope,  when,  by  an  election 
of  the  people,  the  young  Uzziah  had  ascended  the 
throne.  Everything  conspired  to  make  such  a  boy 
a  patriot.  His  vision  and  his  obedience,  I  hope  we 
shall  see,  made  him  a  statesman.     Everjr  force  and 


252    PATHS    TO   THE    CITY   OF    GOD 

every  fact  united  to  make  him  earnest  in  speech  and 
active  in  spirit:  his  vision  and  his  obedience  made 
him  a  prophet  of  Jehovah.  For  half  a  century  did 
Uzziah  hold  a  prosperous  reign.  Fame  carried  his 
sovereignty  upon  every  wind,  and  every  wind  came 
back  again  laden  with  wealth  and  the  glory  of  his 
arms. 

But  all  the  while  the  soul  of  the  people  was  dy- 
ing, and  the  foundations  of  their  government  were 
falling  away.  Success  has  fiercer  trials  for  nations 
and  for  men  than  defeat.  Many  a  nation  has  stood 
firm  and  true,  while  all  the  missiles  of  foes  fell  harm- 
less from  her  shining  shield,  until  victory  had  lulled 
her  conscience  and  virtue  to  sleep  in  the  lap  of 
luxury.  Many  a  man  who  can  endure  failure  and 
unceasing  battle  falls  and  dies  in  the  atmosphere  of 
victory  and  peace.  Here,  beneath  the  unquestioned 
scepter  of  this  King,  worked  the  disintegrating  and 
blasting  powers  which  centuries  after  were  to  build 
amphitheaters  for  amusement,  to  establish  gladia- 
torial shows  for  pleasure,  to  crown  vice  with  honor 
and  to  respect  villainy  in  a  king,  to  make  games  of 
human  life  and  turn  the  tables  of  friendship  into 
centers  of  unmentionable  iniquity,  in  victorious,  re- 
sistless Rome,  until  the  soiled  garments  of  her 
queenly  power  were  torn  from  her  shameless  naked- 
ness by  barbarian  hands  and  her  proud  form  lay 
prostrate  in  the  dust.  There  were  yet  no  Huns  and 
Vandals  standing  before  her  undefended  gates;  but 
silently,  surely,  the  vicious  energies  which  thrive 
in  prosperity  were  making  the  Kingdom  of  Uzziah 


ISAIAH'S    VISION    OF   GOD      253 

an  easy  prey  to  all  her  enemies.  Success  had  tested 
her  with  its  acids,  which  are  the  severest,  and  the 
Kingdom  was  dissolving.  Not  since  the  days  of 
Solomon  had  the  Kingdom  known  such  prosperity. 
It  began  when  the  old  spirit  which  had  so  long  ani- 
mated the  realm  and  had  died  out,  came  back  under 
the  victorious  standards  of  the  new  King.  Edom 
was  reconquered  and  Elath  became  an  unimpeded 
pathway  to  India.  Philistines,  Amorites,  and 
Arabians  bowed  in  submission.  Gath  and  Ashdod, 
the  lands  reaching  to  the  frontier  of  Egypt,  portions 
of  the  historic  soil  east  of  Jordan,  Moab,  and  Am- 
mon,  felt  an  army  of  over  300,000,  clad  in  cuirasses 
and  helmets,  whose  spears  and  shields  knew  nothing 
but  victory.  Commerce,  which  had  not  flourished 
since  the  days  of  Solomon,  whitened  the  seas  or 
moved  in  numberless  caravans.  The  walls  of  Jeru- 
salem which  had  been  cast  down  rose  again,  with 
towers  at  their  angles  filled  with  artillery.  The 
waters  under  the  Kingdom  were  opened  up  in  count- 
less wells,  and  the  vineyards  blushed  with  fruitage, 
while  the  fields  were  heavy  with  harvests;  cities  sat 
upon  the  mountains,  and  forests  and  deserts  were 
dotted  with  towers.  Religion  had  a  royal  favor, 
and  devoutness  found  a  revival.  Zachariah  was  the 
royal  tutor,  and  Amos  and  Micah  were  in  high  es- 
teem. As  compared  with  the  Northern  Kingdom, 
the  religious  life  was  sincere  and  enthusiastic,  but 
when  tried  in  the  presence  of  the  national  growth 
and  splendor,  it  was  but  a  lonely  yet  noble  protest 
against  the  current  of  life. 


254    PATHS    TO    THE    CITY    OF    GOD 

In  the  brilliant  pages  of  Isaiah  it  is  not  difficult 
to  see  how  thoroughly  the  people  of  Judah  failed 
in  the  presence  of  all  this  success.  Not  all  the 
locusts  or  earthquakes,  threatening  of  foes  and  ap- 
prehensions of  misfortune  could  have  so  influenced 
them,  had  not  the  heart  of  their  public  virtue  been 
touched  with  sin.  Private  righteousness  was  de- 
parting and  the  nation  was  threatened.  The  bribe 
had  begun  to  silence  the  justice  of  the  judge. 
Monopoly  of  land,  privilege,  and  governmental  right 
operated  against  the  power  of  the  commonwealth  to 
protect  its  weakest  and  to  succor  its  neediest  citizen. 
The  poor  were  massed  into  a  hopeless  class;  and  as 
the  rich  grew  richer,  they  grew  poorer.  Intemper- 
ance was  in  league  with  the  lust  of  nobles  and  the 
appetite  of  princely  citizens;  and  David's  songs 
were  wearily  sung  at  the  long  debauch.  The  prob- 
lems of  Labor,  Temperance,  and  Honest  Govern- 
ment were  pressed  home,  as  they  always  are  when 
the  same  causes  operate.  Formalism  and  insincerity 
in  religion,  a  view  of  civilization  which  had  no 
vision  of  God  in  it,  above  it,  and  behind  it,  a  wretch- 
edly weak  national  life  which  made  every  man  and 
woman  a  prey  to  foreign  fashions  and  ideas,  a  low 
view  of  family  life  and  responsibilities,  an  honoring 
of  the  aristocracy  of  cash  and  a  corresponding  dis- 
honoring of  the  aristocracy  of  brain  and  character, 
— all  these  dragged  at  the  life  centers  of  the  people 
and  like  death  struck  at  the  courage  of  the  national 
spirit.  "The  whole  head  was  sick  and  the  whole 
heart  faint ;  from  the  crown  of  the  head  to  the  sole 


ISAIAH'S    VISION    OF    GOD      255 

of  the  foot,  no  soundness  was  in  it,  but  wounds  and 
bruises  and  putrefying  sores." 

At  the  very  lowest  moment  of  this  real  decline, 
which,  like  a  skeleton,  was  hid  away  beneath  the  rich 
robes  of  Uzziah's  Kingdom,  the  Crown  fell  from 
him;  death  declared  the  throne  vacant.  But  this 
poetic  young  man — and  every  true  reformer  and 
statesman  is  essentially  a  poet — Isaiah  was  left. 
The  awful  problems  which  had  started  into  life 
under  the  fructifying  suns  of  fifty-two  years  were 
left.  All  the  hopes  and  ambitions  which  from 
the  first  have  redeemed  the  life  of  man  from 
baseness  and  attached  him  by  threads  of  un- 
speakable preciousness  to  the  future  were  left. 
More,  the  certain  fact,  hideous  in  its  false  con- 
cealments, that  this  reign  of  such  unexampled  splen- 
dor and  brilliant  success  had  really  failed  to  save 
the  national  heart  and  conscience  from  disease  bred 
in  luxury — that  fact,  which  leaped  forth  to  the  sight 
of  Isaiah  at  Uzziah's  death,  was  left.  But  more — 
above  all  these  was  the  vision  of  God  who,  also,  was 
left.  Let  Isaiah  speak :  "In  the  death-year  of  King 
Uzziah,  I  saw  Jehovah  sitting  upon  a  high  and 
exalted  throne,  and  His  train  filled  the  temple. 
Seraphim  were  standing  above  Him;  each  had  six 
wings,  with  two  he  covered  his  face,  and  with  two 
he  covered  his  feet,  and  with  two  he  flew;  and 
the  one  kept  crying  to  the  other,  saying :  'Holy,  holy, 
holy  is  Jehovah  Sabaoth.  The  whole  earth  is  filled 
with  His  glory.'  " 

It  is  in  hours  like  this  that  men  get  real  glimpses 


256    PATHS    TO    THE    CITY    OF    GOD 

of  God.  It  is  always  when  some  Uzziah  has  piled 
up  his  successes  until  in  their  very  definiteness  men 
wake  up  to  their  shortcoming  in  the  presence  of  the 
needs  of  the  hour,  that  we  feel  the  Infinite  near  and 
at  last  see  His  skirts  filling  all  the  vacancies  of  life. 
Never  until  we  know  how  much,  do  we  know  how 
little,  man  can  do.  Never  until  we  see  the  best  that 
humanity  achieves  do  we  know  how  grave  are  the 
problems  which  are  born  beneath  our  very  success, 
which  demand  an  infinite  factor  for  their  solution. 
In  the  death-hour  of  Uzziah,  when  under  the  mighty 
hands  of  the  Medici,  Florence  had  been  growing 
luxurious  and  beautiful,  when  gems  flashed  from 
her  proud  neck  and  marble  palaces  were  her  play- 
things, when  copious  rivers  of  revenue  poured  in 
upon  the  Duke  and  the  throne,  and  literature  and  art 
were  in  sight  of  their  long-delayed  laurels,  yea — in 
the  death-hour  of  their  Uzziah  when  Lorenzo  had 
fallen,  Girolamo  Savonarola,  the  Isaiah  of  that  Jeru- 
salem, saw  midst  and  above  the  terrible  problems 
which  his  reign  had  made,  and  which  surrounded 
him,  the  vision  of  Almighty  God.  In  the  death- 
hour  of  Uzziah,  when  the  arms  of  freedom  had 
begun  to  shine  with  glorious  victory,  when  the  hand 
of  rebellion  had  been  pushed  away  from  the  white 
throat  of  liberty,  when  the  whole  race  were  ready  to 
drown  the  dreadful  clanking  of  eighty  years  of 
chains  in  one  glad  song  of  freedom,  when  a  restored 
Union  lifted  up  her  head  above  the.  heat  and  dust  of 
war,  in  the  death-year  of  Uzziah,  when  Lincoln  fell, 
yonder  at  New  York  another  whose  sword  was  like 


ISAIAH'S    VISION    OF    GOD      257 

the  tongue  of  Isaiah,  seeing  the  problem  which  sur- 
vived the  assassin's  bullet,  saw  midst  and  above  them 
the  vision  of  God;  "Fellow-citizens,"  said  Garfield, 
on  that  occasion,  "God  reigns,  and  the  Government 
at  Washington  still  lives." 

In  such  moments,  prophets  become  reformers 
and  statesmen.  Two  elements  go  to  make  up  the 
reformer  and  statesman.  The  reformer  must  know 
thoroughly  that  things  need  reform ;  he  must  clearly 
see  that  the  Holy  God  will  take  up  into  His  own 
movement  and  by  His  power  and  truth  use  every 
effort  to  reform  them.  The  statesman  must  com- 
prehend the  power  of  men's  life  and  hope  which  de- 
mand organization  and  guidance ;  he  must  truly  see 
that  the  Holy  God  of  earth  and  heaven  will  ally 
every  energy  of  the  universe  with  every  effort  made 
by  His  power  and  truth  to  so  organize  and  guide 
the  affairs  of  man.  Only  a  prophet-soul  can  be  a 
true  reformer  or  a  great  statesman.  He  must  feel 
that  the  wandering  threads  of  man  and  time,  which 
seem  to  float  so  loosely  in  every  wind,  are  ultimately 
to  be  taken  up  by  the  great  fingers  who  set  the  pat- 
tern after  which  the  new  universe  is  being  put  to- 
gether, woof  and  warp.  He  must  be  convinced  that 
the  motions  of  men  and  events  are  somewhere  and 
somehow  to  sweep  into  the  general  movement  until 
the  scattered  interests  of  the  universe  shall  become  a 
unit. 

The  impulse  of  reform,  or  statesmanship,  can 
never  be  negative.  No  William  of  Orange,  or  Peter 
the  Great,  was  alone  inspired  by  the  consideration 


258    PATHS    TO    THE    CITY    OF    GOD 

that  things  were  not  as  they  ought  to  be.  The 
vision  of  God  in  the  burning  bush  made  the  true 
birth-hour  of  Moses,  He  became  deliverer  and 
legislator.  The  vision  of  God  in  the  temple  consti- 
tuted Isaiah,  the  reformer  and  statesman  of  Jeru- 
salem, God  is  the  first  fact  in  the  history  of  life; 
the  vision  of  God  is  the  first  fact  in  any  true  plan 
for  the  ordering  of  that  life.  God  is  the  chief 
factor  in  the  flood  of  persons  and  events  which 
sweeps  beneath  us  and  bears  us  on :  the  vision  of 
God  as  He  is,  the  seeing  of  what  He  means,  is  to  be, 
as  it  has  been,  the  chief  factor  in  any  successful 
effort  to  turn  the  current  or  safely  guide  the  argosy 
upon  its  bosom. 

The  tragic  fact  is  that  many  souls,  who,  with  the 
vision  of  God,  would  have  been  fitted  to  do  the 
world  good,  have  been  useless;  and  yet  they  have 
had  a  keen  sense  that  things  were  not  as  they  ought 
to  be.  Loud  and  long  has  been  their  lament.  But 
this  was  simply  negative:  no  fierce  indignation 
which  they  could  summon  could  but  reveal  the  weak- 
ness of  the  sword  they  carried.  Indeed,  their  very 
pleading  proclamation  of  the  unsatisfactoriness  of 
things  as  they  were,  and  this  alone,  started  a  sort 
of  pessimism,  a  doubt  as  to  things  in  general,  which 
has  always  palsied  the  hand  of  reform  and  made 
the  making  of  states  absurd,  A  heroic  optimism 
underlies  all  reform  and  statesmanship,  a  belief  that 
things  are  worth  reforming  and  guiding  and  that 
there  is  something  to  reform  them  with  and  guide 
them  to.     This  awful  emphasis  which  some  men  put 


ISAIAH'S    VISION    OF    GOD      259 

upon  the  sources  of  the  disease  and  the  disease  itself, 
rather  than  that  glad  emphasis  which  other  men  put 
on  the  sources  of  help  and  the  remedy  itself,  marks 
the  complainer  from  the  reformer  and  statesman. 
Of  course,  the  reformer  and  statesman  must  com- 
plain, but  if  he  only  complains,  the  task  will  be  un- 
done and  another  nuisance  will  be  added  to  those 
already  existing.  One  of  the  hardest  tasks  of  states- 
manship is  to  so  organize  society  that  the  complain- 
ing statesman  shall  do  the  least  harm.  Reform 
which  has  reformed  everything  else  has  failed  to 
make  the  notes  of  the  public  pessimist  musical. 

What  in  all  ages  has  made  for  that  optimism 
which  is  at  the  heart  of  all  human  advance,  what 
has  made  men  conscious  of  the  worth  of  the  energies 
which  act  and  react  in  human  life,  what  has  declared 
a  somewhere  to  which  they  may  be  reformed,  what 
has  saved  the  reformer  from  being  a  faultfinder  and 
the  statesman  from  despairing  of  government  has 
been  a  great  and  commanding  vision  of  God.  Uz- 
ziah  dead,  Uzziah's  successes  and  failures  evident, 
problems  springing  forth  from  under  his  very  throne 
still  alive!  Yes:  but  God  is  alive  too.  The  first 
fact  of  this  old  and  weary  world  unchanged  by  the 
flight  of  time!  The  chief  factor  in  all  history  and 
in  all  hope,  high  and  exalted,  Jehovah  Sabaoth ! 

Oh,  brothers !  is  it  not  so  that  our  indolent  use- 
lessness  springs  from  the  fact  that  a  secret  pessi- 
mism, which  grows  where  there  is  no  glimpse  of 
God,  has  been  extracting  our  power.  Rarely  has  an 
age  been  more  conscious  of  its  shortcomings  than  we. 


260    PATHS    TO    THE    CITY    OF    GOD 

We  are  conceited,  I  know,  but  we  are  conceited  over 
our  having  seen  so  deeply  into  ourselves.  We  are 
proud  of  our  self-consciousness,  but  self-conscious- 
ness is  always  nothing  but  consciousness  of  the  dis- 
eased parts.  Only  a  dyspeptic  feels  his  stomach. 
Our  heads  are  bowed  over  our  problems.  No  cen- 
tury ever  talked  about  its  pressing  questions  as  ours. 
We  are  amused  at  our  own  catalogues  of  serious 
problems,  needed  reforms,  tasks  for  the  coming 
statesman  who  has  not  yet  arrived,  until  a  sullen, 
faithless  despair  creeps  in  and  poisons  the  heart  of 
our  hope.  We  need  the  vision  of  God,  as  the 
one  imperial  fact  above  our  survived  problems  and 
our  dead  Uzziah. 

Too  many  efforts  at  reform  and  statesmanship 
begin  in  our  vision  of  man  as  he  is.  Plans  get  the 
diseases  which  we  seek  to  cure.  Schemes  do  not  run 
high  enough.  We  have  no  sense  of  the  eternity  in 
our  minds,  as  we  work.  We  have  no  outlook  on  the 
world-plan  or  the  universe-plan,  as  we  seek  to  at- 
tach our  own  to  something,  except  in  the  Vision  of 
God.  Once  look  into  God's  presence,  once  see  where 
man's  soul  and  life  came  from,  once  get  back  to  the 
energies  which  went  into  him  at  the  creation,  once 
see  the  eternity  of  God's  encompassing  all  schemes 
and  men,  once  see  how  through  earth  and  heaven, 
through  time  and  interests  the  plan  of  God  must 
reach — and  a  serene  optimism  is  born  into  the  mind. 
God  is  personal  and  infinite;  hope  and  reform  come 
to  be  the  conforming  of  things  unconformed  to  this 
infinite  goodness  and  truth;  and  statesmanship  is 


ISAIAH'S    VISION    OF   GOD      261 

the  art  of  guiding  human  wills  by  the  will  of  God. 
No  table  of  statistics  is  valuable  which  does  not  cal- 
culate with  the  movement  of  the  world  the  distance 
God's  purpose  travels  from  sun  to  sun.  Figures 
never  lie  so  surely  as  when  the  factor  of  the  Lord  of 
Hosts  is  not  recognized  as  the  largest  and  most  con- 
stant in  the  equation  of  life  and  time. 

Let  us  notice,  as  helping  to  explain  the  high 
results  of  Isaiah's  life,  not  only  that  he  had  a  vision 
of  God  as  the  imperial  fact  which  no  man  or  nation 
might  leave  out,  as  the  center  toward  which  all 
movements  run,  from  which  they  had  proceeded, 
but  also  that,  as  he  saw  God,  the  divine  presence  and 
influence  penetrated  past  all  limitation  and  touched 
every  spot — "His  skirts  filled  the  temple."  It  was 
the  glimpse  of  the  larger  thought  of  God.  The  very 
seraphs  caught  sight  of  the  fact  that  God,  in  His 
nature  and  plan  and  presence,  was  touching  every 
place,  as  they  kept  crying,  one  to  another,  "The 
whole  earth  is  filled  with  His  glory."  Nay, 
more  strongly  still  did  they  speak.  They  caught  the 
idea  of  the  Divine  immanence — God  everywhere,  God 
in  everything,  the  whole  universe  revealed  as  the  man- 
ifestation of  His  plan,  His  movement,  His  very  na- 
ture :  for  they  cried  out,  "The  fullness  of  the  whole 
earth  is  His  glory."  In  this  vision  of  the  temple  of 
God,  the  line  of  demarcation  between  the  Holy  and 
the  Holy  of  Holies  is  withdrawn.  God  fills  every 
inch  of  the  mighty  fane.  The  whole  universe  is  the 
temple  of  Jehovah.  Every  spot  in  it  is  sacred  be- 
cause of  His  presence.     His  train  fills  the  temple. 


^62    PATHS    TO    THE    CITY    OF    GOD 

No  remotest  event,  no  weakest  man,  no  smallest 
cause,  no  most  unnoticed  truth,  no  most  distant 
movement  but  thrills  with  the  influence  and  presence 
of  God.  It  is  a  great  hour  for  a  reformer  or  states- 
man when  he  really  sees  that  this  is  so; — every 
trifle  of  life  God-endowed,  every  patch  of  earth  or 
sky  instinct  with  the  Divine,  every  concern  of  human 
life  leaping  with  infinite  energies,  everything  secular 
really  sacred — the  skirts  of  the  on-going  God  filling 
the  temple.  The  reformer  and  statesman  know  the 
facts,  remote  or  near ;  they  can  see  their  belongings ; 
they  can  count  on  their  coming  into  the  process,  if, 
at  the  heart  of  their  pohcy  and  philanthropy,  there  is 
the  truth  of  the  omnipresence  of  God.  All  working 
Christianity  is  full  of  it.  Our  theism  has  often 
failed  to  set  it  forth,  but  let  us  rejoice  that  the  poetry 
and  science  of  our  time  unite  with  a  Christian  pan- 
theism old  as  truth,  to  worship  a  God  transcendent 
above  all :  immanent  in  all  the  universe. 

But,  again,  at  the  heart  of  Isaiah's  policy  of 
reform  and  statesmanship  lay  a  truth,  consonant 
with  this,  to  be  always  recognized  with  this, — the 
truth  that,  while  God  and  God's  energies  are  in  us 
and  His  train  fills  all  the  temples  of  life,  He  is  the 
Lord  of  Hosts  and  there  are  above  us  His  forces, 
often  unseen,  which  act  upon  our  life.  The  seraphs 
kept  crying  one  to  another:  "Jehovah  Sahaoth." 
He,  whose  skirts  filled  the  temple.  He  the  fullness 
of  the  whole  earth  is  whose  glory,  He  whose  presence 
is  in  and  upon  everything — He  is  the  Lord  of  Hosts. 
The  very  hosts  seemed  to  sing  it  through  those 


ISAIAH'S    VISION    OF    GOD      263 

seraphic  voices :  ''Jehovah  'Sabaoth."  Every  man's 
vision  of  the  true  God  of  history  or  of  hope  repeats 
this  of  Isaiah.  Behind  every  great  statesman,  or 
reformer,  whether  he  speaks  our  theologic  dialect  or 
not,  is  a  vision  of  the  power  which  leads  the  universe 
and  every  atom  of  it  to  lofty  ends,  whose  forces  run 
everywhere,  whose  flowing  robes  fill  the  whole  palace 
of  life  and  being,  and  whose  energies  are  more  than 
we  see  and  hear  and  know,  and  above  us, — the  Lord 
of  Hosts.  A  man  need  not  believe  intelligently  all 
the  truth  about  a  Seraph  and  Cherub,  but,  if  he  is 
to  organize  society  and  guide  men  well,  if  he  is  to 
reform  abuses  and  reconstitute  broken-down  human- 
ity, he  must  with  the  inner  eye  of  thought  and  faith, 
see  that  the  powers  above  life  are  supreme  over  those 
beneath  it,  that  there  are  more  and  finer  energies  in 
the  unseen  than  in  the  seen,  that  they  that  are  for  us 
are  more  than  they  that  be  against  us,  and  that 
around  every  Elisha  are  chariots  and  horses  in  the 
clouds  which  are  the  invisible  reserve  of  God  and 
man.  This  faith  in  unseen  truths  and  powers  has 
made  men  brave  enough  to  be  statesmen  rather  than 
politicians.  They  have  counted  upon  the  reality  of 
what  they  did  not  see.  The  merely  shrewd  poli- 
ticians have  looked  and  listened  and  put  all  their 
visible  forces  into  their  own  measures  and  methods. 
The  statesmen  have  looked  and  listened  also,  but 
with  the  unseen  power  of  truth  and  right  and  God ; 
they  have  counted  on  the  hosts  of  the  Lord.  They 
have  known  that  ideas  and  principles  are  God's 
messengers  to  command  men  and  lead  them;  they; 


264    PATHS    TO    THE    CITY    OF    GOD 

have  believed  that  progress  is  made  by  the  rule  of 
the  powers  above  man's  vision,  rather  than  that  of 
these  below  it;  and  not  politicians,  but  statesmen 
have  ruled  the  world.  So  all  reform  depends  on  a 
Lord  of  Hosts. 

But  chiefly  at  the  head  of  Isaiah's  policy  of 
reform  and  statecraft  lay  the  quickening  truth  of  the 
holiness  of  this  God  of  whom  he  had  seen  a  vision : 
"Holy,  holy,  holy  Lord  God  of  Hosts,"  the  seraphim 
cried,  and  "Holy,  holy,  holy  Lord  God  of  Hosts,"  a 
seraph  answered.  It  has  been  the  song  of  the 
Church  in  hovel  and  palace,  in  the  leafy  groves  and 
in  the  magnificent  cathedral  through  mighty  an- 
thems, oratorios,  and  masses,  and  in  children's 
melodies  for  thousands  of  years.  Our  old  planet 
has  forgotten  it  often  in  politics  and  in  the  hollow 
mockery  of  reform,  but  statesmanship  and  philan- 
thropy, every  congeries  of  powers  set  to  make  the 
world  advance,  or  improve,  has  had  at  its  core  the 
truth  not  only  that  this  is  God's  universe,  but  that 
the  universe's  God  is  holy;  and  above  every  lasting 
triumph  have  fluttered  the  banners  which  bore  the 
words:  "Holy,  holy,  holy  Lord  God  of  Hosts." 
Every  army  which  has  forgotten  to  count  on  the  fact 
that  the  supremacy  of  this  system  of  things  lay  in 
the  hands  of  holiness  has  failed  of  permanent  tri- 
umph. "The  power  not  ourselves  that  makes  for 
righteousness" — object  to  the  theological  way  of 
saying  it,  and  accept  this,  if  you  will;  but  to  neglect 
that  factor — "a  power  making  for  righteousness" — 
is  to  have  the  universe  against  you.     Your  fancied 


ISAIAH'S    VISION    OF   GOD      J265 

authority  of  the  majority,  and  your  dreadful  vox 
populi,  are  as  straw  beneath  the  feet  of  a  dawning 
righteousness.  Build  in  the  night  your  icy  wrong 
high  as  heaven,  right  will  be  here  with  sunrise  and 
with  a  single  ray  tumble  it  down.  Statesmanship 
is  the  art  of  getting  things  ready  for  a  holy  God, 
who  is  always  coming  to  judge  the  earth.  Reform 
lies  in  transforming  institutions,  methods,  laws,  un- 
til they  conform  to  the  holiness  of  God  who  comes 
apace.  Every  Isaiah  of  Jerusalem  has  at  some  time 
in  his  life  heard  the  seraph  cry,  "Holy,  holy,  holy 
Lord  God  of  Hosts,"  until  every  other  seraph  an- 
swered. Sometime  he  saw  that  the  energies  which 
play  in  earth  and  sky  are  led  by  a  supreme  righteous- 
ness. Saint  Bernard  as  a  boy  looked  up  into  the 
eye  of  a  father  of  whom  we  are  told  that  he  had 
"an  incredible  zeal  for  justice."  Before  this  in- 
vincible reformer  was  a  vision  of  God.  "Trust  my 
experience,"  he  said;  "you  will  find  something 
greater  in  the  woods  than  in  books."  In  the  valley 
of  Wormwood,  in  the  dispute  between  Louis  VI.  and 
the  Bishop  of  Paris,  in  his  struggle  with  the  rich 
monks  of  Cluny,  in  his  championship  of  Innocent,  in 
his  contest  with  the  church  of  Lyons,  in  his  heroic 
defense  of  the  laws,  he  simply  held  before  men  his 
vision  of  a  holy  God,  and  so  stands  "for  the  suprem- 
acy of  righteousness  over  secular  and  ecclesiastical 
authority."  Above  beautiful  Florence,  guarded  by 
the  Apennines  and  cradled  by  the  Arno,  above  the 
countless  spires,  the  palace  of  Lorenzo,  the  Cathedral 
square,    Giotto's    tower,    the   banners   of    France, 


Q66    PATHS    TO    THE    CITY    OF    GOD 

Austria,  and  Naples,  hung  the  monk's  vision  of  an 
absolutely  holy  God,  who  was  marching  on.  By 
that  vision  he  worked  and  wept  and  burned,  to  get 
obstacles  out  of  God's  path,  as  God  came  on  to  the 
days  of  republics  and  of  popes  shorn  of  temporal 
power.  His  vision  so  ruled  him  that  his  statesman- 
ship dazzles  the  children  of  Washington.  "What- 
ever obscures  your  sense  of  God,"  cried  John  Wesley, 
"that  thing  is  sin  to  you."  His  vision  of  God  as  a 
Holy  God  lay  at  the  root  of  the  revival,  terrified  the 
formalism  of  the  establishment,  and  commanded  the 
discipleship  of  millions.  Above  the  shame  of  London, 
with  a  mighty  sense  of  the  holiness  of  God,  amidst 
abuse  and  the  sneers  of  cruel  wealth,  with  unquailing 
heroism,  with  a  patience  unmatched,  Shaftesbury 
drew  from  his  vision  of  God  an  intolerance  of  wrong 
like  God's,  a  love  for  righteousness  like  that  of 
heaven  until  the  Holy  God  had  marched  over  the  un- 
holy corpse  of  justice.  O,  for  the  vision  of  God  as 
an  immanent  God,  as  the  Lord  of  Hosts,  as  the  one 
to  whom  we  cry,  "Holy,  holy,  holy  Lord  God  of 
Hosts,  the  fullness  of  earth  is  Thy  glory." 

Never  so  surely  as  to-day  did  the  literature  and 
life  of  man  recognize  that  its  Uzziah  is  dead.  The 
King  who  for  a  while  has  ruled  the  consciousness 
of  humanity,  with  so  much  outward  success,  has 
fallen  from  his  throne.  It  is  impossible  to  get  our 
political  economy,  our  trade,  our  churches,  our  so- 
ciety to  feel  that  the  powers  which  have  had  sov- 
ereignty over  life  so  long  will  satisfactorily  rule 
men's  hearts  and  hands  longer.     Dividends  are  not 


ISAIAH'S    VISION    OF    GOD      267 

enough.  Ideals  have  got  at  the  throat  of  sordid 
interests.  There  is  a  conviction  that  something  else, 
along  with,  but  beside  the  intellectual  and  social 
energies  so  long  in  control,  is  needed  to  guide  the 
ever  enlarging  and  the  evermore  complicated  life 
of  humanity.  Uzziah  is  dead.  Problems  also  have 
sprung  up  under  his  dominion — the  old  problems 
of  Uzziah's  time.  Modern  society  has  been  a  bril- 
liant success;  yet  the  King  dies  of  leprosy.  The 
very  disease  which  fastens  its  fangs  in  the  wasted 
body  of  a  pauper  gets  at  the  King.  What  would  an 
Isaiah  say  to  our  enervating  luxuriousness  of  life? 
Just  what  he  did  say  might  be  unpleasantly  true. 
Hear  him :  "Thy  silver  is  become  dross :  thy  choice 
wine  thinned  with  water.  Thy  law-makers  are  law- 
breakers, and  in  partnership  with  thieves;  everyone 
loveth  a  bribe  and  pursueth  rewards ;  to  the  orphan 
they  do  not  justice,  and  the  cause  of  the  widow 
Cometh  not  unto  them."  "His  land  is  become  full  of 
silver  and  gold,  and  without  end  are  his  treasures; 
and  his  land  has  become  full  of  horses  and  without 
end  are  his  chariots;  and  his  land  has  become  full 
of  not-gods ;  to  the  work  of  their  hands  do  they  hom- 
age, to  that  which  their  fingers  have  made."  And 
Jehovah  said,  "Because  the  daughters  of  Zion  are 
proud,  and  go  with  outstretched  throat  and  ogling 
eyes.  They  go  tripping  along  and  tinkling  with 
their  feet ;  therefore  the  Lord  will  smite  with  a  scab 
the  crown  of  the  head  of  the  daughters  of  Zion  and 
Jehovah  will  make  bare  their  secret  parts.  In  that 
day  Jehovah  will  take  away  the  finer^r  of  their 


268    PATHS    TO    THE    CITY    OF    GOD 

anklets,  the  wreaths  and  crescents ;  the  ear-drops  and 
the  arm-chains  and  the  fine  veils;  the  diadems  and 
the  stepping-chains  and  the  girdles,  and  the  scent- 
bottles  and  the  armlets;  the  seal-rings  and  the  nose- 
rings ;  the  state  dresses  and  the  tunics  and  the  wrap- 
pers and  the  purses;  the  mirrors  and  the  linen  shifts 
and  the  turbans  and  the  large  veils.  And  it  shall 
come  to  pass :  instead  of  perfume  there  shall  be 
rottenness:  and  instead  of  a  girdle  a  rope,  and 
instead  of  artificial  curls  baldness,  and  instead  of 
a  mantle  a  girding  of  sackcloth,  a  brand  instead  of 
beauty."  "Woe  unto  those  who  join  house  to  house, 
who  add  field  to  field,  till  there  is  no  room  left." 
"Woe  unto  those  who  declare  the  wicked  righteous 
for  a  bribe  and  take  away  the  righteousness  of  the 
righteous  from  him!" 

Our  Isaiah  would  thus  speak  in  the  presence  of 
the  wrongs  and  iniquities  which  have  grown  up  in 
our  Uzziah-like  success.  Wealth  is  too  nearly  con- 
gested in  the  few :  the  curse  of  intemperance  and 
greed  is  enthroned  in  palace  and  hovel:  the  slums 
of  each  metropolis  are  breeding  savages :  the  Church 
is  still  looking  for  the  best  families  and  sending  the 
poor  to  the  missions:  foreign  fashions,  Anglo- 
maniacs  and  the  French  dancing-master  have  given 
direction  to  the  society  of  the  ignorant  rich :  all  sorts 
of  unholy  compromises  work  into  legislation  and 
stain  our  statute  books — Uzziah  is  dead :  these  prob- 
lems created  during  his  reign  yet  live.  Where,  oh 
Church  of  God!  is  the  hand  of  salvation?  Where 
is  the  yoice  to  proclaim  that  in  righteousness  onl^  is 


ISAIAH'S    VISION    OF    GOD      269 

hope?  Where  is  that  real  goodness,  which  is  the 
eye  of  greatness,  to  say:  "In  the  death-year  of  Uz- 
ziah,  I  saw  Jehovah  sitting  upon  a  high  and  exalted 
throne,  and  His  train  filled  the  palace:  Seraphim 
were  standing  above  Him :  each  had  six  wings :  with 
two  he  covered  his  feet,  and  with  two  he  flew :  and 
the  one  kept  crying  to  the  other,  saying,  Holy, 
Holy,  Holy  is  the  Lord  of  Hosts,  the  whole  earth 
is  filled  with  His  glory!"  Where?  Do  not  falter, 
above  all  do  not  despair.  The  answer  is  here  and  it 
satisfies.  Behold  consecrated  young  American  man- 
hood assuming  the  duties  of  statesmanship. 


XIV 
THE  ANGEL  STANDING  IN  THE  SUN 

•*  /  saw  an  angel  standing  in  the  sun."    Revelation 
xix.  17. 

IS  UP  POSE  the  inspired  man  who  wrote  the 
book  of  Revelations  may  be  rightly  called  a 
seer.  He  at  least  fills  our  idea  and  ideal  of  such 
a  one.  He  was  the  see-er,  who  caught  rapturous 
visions  of  what  it  has  taken  long  ages  for  other 
minds  to  discover;  his  was  the  open  eye  obtaining 
a  glance  of  what  it  has  required  less  sensitive  eyes 
to  arrive  at  through  many  toilsome  speculations. 
Take  as  an  example  the  text  I  have  brought  this 
morning.  If  I  go  to  the  most  serious  and  devout 
thinkers,  they  tell  me  that  there  is  something  in  what 
we  call  matter  that  they  cannot  account  for;  that 
behind  all  this  active  network  of  law  there  seems 
to  stand  in  the  dignity  of  omnipotence  a  higher  than 
law;  that  in  these  great  rushings-on  of  force 
throughout  the  visible  universe  there  seems  to  be  a 
purpose  which  is  so  related  to  the  destiny  of  all  its 
parts  that  life  grows  more  beautiful  and  the  future 
seems  more  safe ;  yea,  that  in  each  motion  of  a  single 
leaf  and  in  the  mighty  revolutions  of  man  there 
must  be  a  reason  for  it  so  true  that  the  event  is 
justifiable,  else  the  universe  would  fall  to  pieces — 

370 


THE    ANGEL    IN    THE    SUN     271 

so  religious  that  it  is  divine.  The  great  thinkers 
thus  gather  up  the  deepest  thinkings  of  all 
the  ages  and  pronounce  these  as  the  hard-won 
result.  But  John  cries  in  the  innocent  joy  of  a 
vision,  at  first  hand,  with  a  rapture  like  that  of  a 
new  discovery:  "I  saw  an  angel  standing  in  the 
sun."  Logic  thus  tardily  comes  to  speak  half  doubt- 
fully of  what  Insight  long  ago  heralded  with  tri- 
umphant certainty. 

Without  trying  to  settle  the  claims  of  these,  let 
us  rejoice  that  if  John  said  it  first  the  thinkers  of 
to-day  realize,  as  the  facts  come  in,  that  it  was  a 
great  utterance,  It  has  been  the  theme  of  the 
noblest,  the  discovery  of  the  boldest,  the  joy  of 
the  devoutest,  the  rapture  of  the  holiest.  It  is  the 
audible  ripple  of  life's  great  sea  when  its  tide  is 
highest,  and  the  receding  wave  which  mingles  again 
in  the  race's  common  thought  says  no  loftier  word 
than  when  it  thus  makes  its  report :  "I  saw  an  angel 
standing  in  the  sun." 

Just  here  one  tendency  of  our  time  will  be  dis- 
posed to  offer  objection.  For  opposed  to  this 
revelation  of  which  I  speak,  one  is  informed  that 
science  has  to  offer  some  facts  which  collide  with 
the  old  views.  I  was  about  to  say  that  the  "sun" 
in  my  text  stood  for  nature  in  general,  and  that 
nature  was  the  frame  through  which  looks  out  the 
face  of  something  brighter — so  much  brighter  that 
even  in  the  brilliance  of  nature  its  own  finer  splendor 
outlines  itself;  it  can  be  seen  and  inquired  of — an 
angel  in  the  sun,  a  soul  in  things.    But  one  is  asked 


272    PATHS    TO   THE    CITY    OF    GOD 

to  halt  and  is  told  to  "deal  in  no  superstition  of  the 
past."  We  stand  before  the  court  of  reason.  I 
hear  numberless  voices;  and  all  that  we  can  agree 
upon  is  that  man  is  the  brief  for  nature's  case,  on 
him  she  asks  judgment.  Man  is  the  sublime  effort 
of  nature  to  write  her  autobiography.  Another  has 
stated  the  case  of  these  objecting  thinkers.  "Life 
from  its  inception  has  been  driving  at  a  development 
of  brain  power,  at  least  upon  this  planet.  The 
human  brain  can  be  traced  from  its  first  sediment 
in  a  speck,  a  thin  line,  a  line  with  a  speck  to  it, 
through  the  lowest  animal  form,  becoming  more 
complicated  as  fresh  and  complex  circumstances 
environed  it.  It  seems  clear,  then,  that  the  human 
brain  is  a  chronicle  of  the  successive  evolutions  of 
animal  life.  Inside  of  vertebral  column  on  succes- 
sive stairs  of  nervous  substance  it  has  climbed  into 
its  outlook  from  the  head.  The  past  history  of  this 
tentative  effort  of  nature  is  taken  up  by  the  human 
brain  and  rehearsed  from  spine  to  forehead  with 
just  so  much  of  a  supplement  as  man  would  need 
to  unfold  a  new  condition  of  nature."  This  supple- 
ment which  is  seen  in  man  has  worked  us  into  the 
mischievous  belief  that  there  was  such  a  thing  as  a 
human  soul.  And,  I  am  advised  that  the  same  life 
which  dwells  in  plants  and  animals  "is  just  as  com- 
petent to  take  the  last  step  as  to  take  any  or  all  the 
preceding  steps  without  the  expense  of  creating  in- 
dividual souls,"  that  it  "has  slid  along  so  gradually 
and  unbrokenly  through  its  series  as  to  leave  not  one 
crevice  for  the  smuggling  in  of  souls."     If,  there- 


THE    ANGEL    IN    THE    SUN     273 

fore,  we  call  man  the  bright  spot — the  glory — the 
"sun"  of  the  universe,  no  angel  looks  out  of  that 
sun.    The  soul  is  an  illusion.    Is  this  the  statement? 

The  question  is,  then,  what  created  the  illusion? 
If  here  this  morning,  I  select  from  my  audience  a 
human  being  and  produce  through  his  eyes,  face, 
voice,  thought,  and  conduct,  an  immortal  thing,  I 
must  have  had  immorfalness  in  me  out  of  which  it 
was  born.  If  looking  upon  my  physical  self,  I  make 
an  illusion  glow  in  my  eyes,  tremble  in  my  voice, 
shiver  in  my  body — I  am  certainly  other  than  the 
physical  self  on  which  I  produce  it,  and  I  can  put 
nothing  into  that  illusion  which  I  did  not  have.  Ah, 
it  takes  spirit  to  spiritualize;  it  requires  a  soul  to 
invent  one. 

Now,  is  it  not  more  than  "life"  that  looks  out  of 
the  brain  and  brings  back  into  my  brain  the  picture 
of  the  hundreds  looking  at  me  ?  Why  did  not  "life" 
thus  look  out  of  an  animal's  head  before  ?  Why  did 
it  wait  until  it  had  climbed  into  a  man's  brain  ?  Ah, 
life  did  not  wait.  Life  did  all  that  it  could  do.  But 
it  could  reach  out  by  the  force  of  natural  law  in  the 
plant  called  Venus  Fly  Trap  and  Catch-Fly,  but  it 
did  not  know  that  it  did  it.  It  could  lift  the  arm  of  a 
monkey  and  snatch  a  bit  of  food,  but  it  did  not  add 
thought  and  fire  to  it  by  cooking  it.  By  and  by,  it 
nursed  a  human  baby's  lips  at  its  own  bosom,  and 
something  in  the  baby's  body  said :  "I  am  not  what 
I  look  through" — and  that  same  "life"  which  had 
not  stopped  until  that  human  being  came,  laughed 
under  the  baby's  ribs,  when  the  soul  of  the  baby  said : 


274    PATHS    TO   THE    CITY    OF    GOD 

"Well,  Life,  is  that  you?  I  have  come  at  last;  I 
have  come  from  the  above  to  lead  you  out  into 
Shakespeares  and  Emersons."  Behold,  an  angel 
stood  in  the  sun. 

Just  that  is  the  soul's  testimony  to  itself.  It 
astonishes  life  by  looking  back  on  life's  record. 
There  was  no  past  until  the  soul  came  and  called 
it  up.  And  it  astonished  life  more  by  asking  a 
question:  "Life,  where  did  you  come  from?"  Life 
could  not  tell  until  the  soul  said  God,  and  then  nature 
saw  that  life  began  in  mind  and  ends  in  mind.  It 
crept  on  from  immortality  and  rounded  the  curve 
of  mortality  to  wake  up  immortally  in  the  thought 
of  immortal  man. 

In  all  this  controversy  about  the  origin  of  the 
mind,  it  is  strange  that  more  attention  has  not  been 
given  to  this  point.  I  do  not  attach  half  so  much 
importance  to  the  fact  that  evolution  cannot  say 
but  that  in  the  crevice  between  the  monkeys  and  man 
there  might  have  occurred  what  is  called  "the  smug- 
gling in  of  souls,"  as  I  do  to  the  fact  that  in  a  human 
race  there  is  something  that  just  turns  around  and 
faces  the  past  and  says :  "Now  I  will  talk,  and  I  want 
you  to  account  for  the  talker."  Why,  that  some- 
thing plunges  materialism  into  a  hopeless  abyss 
when  it  turns  around  and  separates  itself  from  its 
brain,  as  it  were,  and  says:  "Come,  now,  we  will 
watch  the  brain  move  while  /  speak,"  I  ask  materi- 
alism if  that  is  the  brain  turning  around  upon  itself. 
If  it  is  not,  what  is  it  that  says :  "I  can't  remember 
as  I  used  to — my  brain  is  affected  right  here," — 


THE   ANGEL    IN    THE    SUN     275 

and  lifts  the  finger  to  the  place  and  points  it  out. 
Is  it  not  a  musician  saying :  "The  b  flat  key  on  this 
register  is  broken"?  The  very  fact  therefore  that 
the  soul  will  think  of  evolution,  and  hunt  for  its  lost 
biography  in  a  brain,  is  evidence  that  it  is  not 
entirely  an  evolution. 

Besides,  if  "man  stands  for  all  the  past,"  if  "all 
that  has  preceded  him  gathers  itself  together  in 
him,"  if  he  is  only  this — how  can  he  talk  about 
things  that  the  matter  in  his  skull  never  felt  or 
experienced?  What  eye  ever  saw  perfect  beauty, 
and  yet  Something  thinks  it  within  the  skull.  What 
ear  ever  heard  perfect  harmony  ?  What  experience 
has  ever  found  perfect  goodness?  Yet,  this  Some- 
thing talks  about  these  things.  The  astonishing  fact 
is  that  the  gross  materialism  which  preaches  "death" 
to  all,  should  fail  to  see  that  if  there  has  been 
nothing  independent  of  death,  and  man  is  nothing 
but  experience,  he  never  could  have  had  the  thought 
of  living  forever.  You  could  not  add  together 
enough  minus  mortalities  to  make  a  plus  gleam  of 
immortality.  It  is  that  which  searches  brain- 
records  in  vain  for  its  history,  which  sings  with  so 
so  much  more  resonance  of  tone,  because  of  George 
Meredith's  unyielding  grasp  upon  the  difficulty  in 
life  and  thought : 

"  Our  questions  are  a  mortal  brood, 

Our  work  is  everlasting. 
We  children  of  Beneficence 

Are  in  its  being  sharers  ; 
And  Whither  vainer  sounds  than  Whence, 

For  word  with  such  wayfarers." 


2T6    PATHS    TO   THE    CITY    OF    GOD 

So  we  stand  with  man,  and  hear  him  as  he 
hunts  out  his  path  through  fierce  struggles  in  the  Hfe 
of  the  past,  and  say,  though  the  path  of  the  soul  has 
been  a  long  and  rough  one, 

"  From  harmony,  from  heavenly  harmony. 
This  universal  frame  began; 
From  harmony  to  harmony, 

Through  all  the  compass  of  the  notes  it  ran. 
The  diapason  closing  full  with  man." 

But  our  song  about  man  is  suddenly  hushed  if 
in  this  nature  and  behind  it,  we  may  not  see  a 
loftier  one  than  he.  He  is  a  poor  prince  for  such  a 
universe  as  this.  He  alone  is  a  pauper-king — and, 
when  we  reflect  that  nature  existed  before  him,  we 
conclude  there  must  be,  in  the  "backward  and  abysm 
of  time,"  a  greater  than  he.  It  does  not  suffice  that 
we  find  a  soul  in  his  face,  for  this  soul  asks  awful 
questions.  Man  longs  for  communion.  He  hopes — 
he  does  not  even  dare  to  think  that  the  life  of  this 
universe  is  in  mighty  hands,  and  if  not — if  there  is 
nothing  but  nature;  if  after  he  has  found  himself, 
he  sees  that  his  cradle  is  his  tomb,  he  feels  like 
praying  with  Hamlet : 

"  And  therefore  now 
Let  her  that  is  the  womb  and  tomb  of  all, 
Great  Nature,  take,  and  forcing  far  apart, 
Mere  blind  beginnings  that  have  made  me  man, 
Dash  them  together  at  her  will, 
Through  all  her  cycles," 

He  hears  men  talking  about  evolution,  and  asks, 
from  what?  Yea,  he  looks  up  tearfully  and  cries : 
"If  I  have  come  thus  far,  where  now?  where  now?" 


THE    ANGEL    IN    THE    SUN     277 

You  cannot  stop  his  queries  by  telling  him  of 
primitive  atoms,  for  he  clutches  the  first  atom  in 
his  thought,  and  he  cries:  ^'Whence  did  you  come? 
Who  loaded  you  with  the  weight  of  me?  Whose 
purpose  groaned  in  you,  through  infinite  struggles, 
until  I  came  into  being?"  He  cannot  be  hushed 
by  telling  him  of  the  "cosmic  vapor"  of  Huxley, 
or  the  "fiery  cloud"  of  Tyndall.  He  says:  "Who 
breathed  infant  civilization  into  these?"  When 
geology  tells  about  its  flood,  he  cries:  "Who 
organized  the  currents  and  sent  them  forth 

"  Till  from  the  center  to  the  streaming  clouds 
A  shoreless  ocean  tumbled  '  round  the  globe '  ?  " 

He  asks,  until  John  Tyndall  says,  "The  question  of 
Napoleon:  'Who  made  the  heavens?'  must  remain 
unanswered."  But  this  does  not  satisfy.  And  then 
he  goes  to  nature  to  find,  as  he  looks  into  matter, 

"  A  sense  sublime 
Of  something  far  more  deeply  interfused. 
Whose  dwelling  is  the  light  of  setting  suns, 
And  the  round  ocean  and  the  living  air. 
And  the  blue  sky,  and  the  deep  heart  of  man." 

Then  the  sun  is  only  fit  to  frame  the  mighty 
portrait.  He  feels  that  the  purposes  of  matter 
center  in  God;  the  laws  recede  into  the  Law-giver, 
and  in  unutterable  loyalty  he  says:  "My  father 
worketh  hitherto,  and  I  work."  Every  sunbeam  is 
the  kiss  which  the  angel,  peering  through  it  at  him, 
throws  across  the  spaces  as  the  seal  of  his  everlast- 
ing love. 


278    PATHS    TO    THE    CITY    OF    GOD 

I  have  taken  this  text  to  mean  that  within  and 
behind  visible  nature — is  the  Eternal  One.  Brighter, 
yea,  so  much  brighter,  that  radiant  nature  seems 
only  a  frame  in  which  we  behold  Him — stands  the 
universal  will,  and  through  bright  nature  speaks 
and  acts  the  Eternal  God.  0£  the  glory  of  nature 
poets  have  tried  in  vain  to  give  a  description.  No 
song  has  been  sung  strong  or  sweet  enough  to  bear 
the  liquid  melody  of  a  running  brook.  No  ear  has 
been  quick  enough  to  catch  it.  No  verses  have 
attained  the  rhythm  of  falling  rain;  no  tumult  of 
music  has  sounded  with  approaching  likeness  to  the 
deep-toned  thunder.  The  silences  which  men  have 
created  do  not  approach  in  stillness  the  path  of  the 
snow,  and  neither  silver  nor  gold  has  been  polished 
so  brightly  but  that  when  the  midnight  moon  or  mid- 
day sun  fell  upon  them  a  brighter  luster  came.  The 
sun  itself  has  defied  description.  Its  march  has  com- 
pelled silence.  Now  I  discern  the  true  idea  and 
place  of  religion,  for  I  perceive  the  angel  in  the  sun. 
In  glory  that  is  beyond  description,  he  sees  a  some- 
thing, an  angel,  but  of  a  glory  so  infinitely  luminous 
that  "standing  in  the  sun,"  as  it  does,  its  outline, 
form,  face — yea,  character — are  clearly  seen. 
Against  a  background  of  light,  indescribable,  stands 
a  something  ineffably  more  glorious!  Within,  and 
behind,  nature,  which  is  superior  to  all  accounts  in 
literature,  is  nature's  infinity,  God,  of  infinite  trans- 
cendence to  nature  itself.  My  friends,  just  at  this 
point  religion  begins.  Science,  philosophy,  and  dis- 
covery stand  charmed  and  yet  speechless  before  the 


THE    ANGEL   IN    THE    SUN     279 

sun;  but  religion  sends  her  eye  through  oceans  of 
light,  disdains  to  stop  on  any  solar  mountain,  presses 
on  to  unbolt  the  golden  doors,  and  looking  back  to 
science,  philosophy,  discovery — cries  across  the  sun- 
swept  place :  "I  see  an  angel  standing  in  the  sun !" 

But  right  here,  we  come  upon  a  difficulty,  for  a 
deeper  skepticism  asks:  "Is  this  something  in  and 
behind  the  sun  a  fit  object  for  devotion?" 

The  chief  result  of  the  extraordinary  revival  in 
the  study  of  nature  is,  as  has  been  said,  the  driving 
out  of  the  idea  of  chance  from  the  thinking  of  men. 
Modem  scientific  thought  has  no  place  for  an 
accident;  it  has  no  respect  for  him  who  shall  hint 
the  existence  of  what  law  did  not  produce,  does  not 
uphold,  and  shall  not  rule.  If  it  errs  by  too  near  an 
approach  to  fate  in  its  running  away  from  chance, 
it  is  only  its  exaggerated  conception  of  the  sover- 
eignty of  law.  It  sees  the  sun  as  the  orb  which  pours 
out  of  his  bosom  the  effulgence  which  transforms 
our  universe  into  a  palace  of  light,  as  the  mighty 
painter  who  makes  the  emerald  grass  and  the 
amethyst  hyacinth,  as  the  great  inspirer  of  their 
rootlets  and  the  wooing  blesser  of  their  growing 
glory.  Scientific  as  is  our  present-day  thinking,  it 
sees  all  these  so  truly  that  in  Tennyson  it  makes 
itself  into  poetry.  And  yet  it  beholds  in  that  sun  so 
much  matter — so  many  vitalized  forces  so  forced 
together  into  a  luminous  and  illuminating  mass,  by 
greater  forces  from  without  its  awful  rim,  that  it  is 
a  mighty  unit  of  force.  Every  shape  it  takes,  every 
mote  it  glorifies,  every  leaf  it  touches,  every  inch  it 


280    PATHS    TO    THE    CITY    OF    GOD 

has  traveled  to  do  it,  every  spark  it  expels — all  it 
does  is  the  result  and  manifestation  of  law.  Greater 
than  it  is  the  law  that  girds  it  about.  Longer  than 
its  farthest-shot  beam  is  the  sovereignty,  deeper  than 
its  abyss  of  fire  are  the  supreme  hidings  of  the  law. 

And  yet,  in  that  sun,  so  seemingly  fated,  so 
absolutely  enshackled,  so  utterly  environed,  '.and 
ruled  by  law,  every  modern  John  need  pray  for  no 
extraordinary  spiritual  insight  to  behold,  return  to 
those  who  never  knew  what  these  blessed  islands  of 
Patmos  meant,  and  say :  "I  saw  an  angel  standing  in 
the  sun." 

To  pursue  the  thought — while  we  look  at  the  sun 
and  behold  in  that  lens  of  gold  the  existence  and 
operation  of  law,  we  are  confronted  at  once  with  the 
demand  of  the  soul  for  the  person  who  gave  the  law, 
and  whose  will  is  its  authority.  Just  at  this  point 
the  mind  of  man  catches  or  loses  it  all.  Oh,  how 
grand  are  the  soul's  soliloquies!  There  must  be  a 
something  to  be  governed,  if  there  is  government. 
For  without  a  reason  for  existing,  law  could  not  be 
at  all, — much  less  could  it  govern.  A  law,  a 
government  stands  forth  in  every  sunbeam.  But 
then  the  soul  says:  "There  are  sunstrokes — it  may 
be  a  demon  will  that  rules."  Still  the  fine  golden 
light  pours  down.  "No,"  the  mind  says,  "the 
universe  could  not  hang  together  on  wrong;  if  the 
particles  of  the  sun  were  not  held  together  by 
mutual  truth,  they  would  separate  forever.  It  must 
be  that  a  Holy  Will  rules — and  then  it  is  that, 
through  tears,  shot  into  all  the  colors  with  beams 


THE   ANGEL    IN    THE    SUN     281 

of  light,  the  idea  of  the  sovereignty  of  law  is  lost  in 
the  fact  of  the  Sovereign  God,  and  the  soul  comes 
to  its  race  in  a  Joseph  Henry  or  a  Norman  Lockyer 
and  says :  "I  saw  an  angel  standing  in  the  sun." 

But  a  Strauss  looks  on  and  says:  "In  the 
enormous  machine  of  the  universe,  amid  the  in- 
cessant whirl  and  hiss  of  its  jagged  iron  wheels, 
amid  the  deafening  crash  of  its  ponderous  stamps 
and  hammers,  in  the  midst  of  this  whole  terrific 
commotion,  man,  a  helpless  and  defenseless  creature, 
finds  himself  placed,  not  secure  for  a  moment  that 
on  an  unimportant  motion  a  wheel  may  not  seize 
and  rend  him,  or  a  hammer  crush  him  to  powder. 
The  sense  of  abandonment  is  at  first  something 
awful.  But,  then,  what  avails  it  to  have  recourse 
to  an  illusion  ?" 

It  is  certain  that  whatever  may  be  the  force  of 
the  statement  that  nature  is  full  of  cruelty  and  pain, 
all  the  deeper  thought  of  our  time  realizes,  in  the 
majestic  ongoings  of  the  universe,  the  silent 
approach  unto  higher  forms  of  life.  It  is  the  old 
story  of  death  and  resurrection.  In  the  lambent 
flame  which  the  sun  sent  to  strike  the  earth  with 
parching  fire  there  stood  an  angel,  as  the  earth 
which  was  stricken  found  out  after  many  years.  In 
the  law  which  made  a  sacrifice  in  the  death  of  the 
unfit,  there  is  seen  to  be  standing,  like  an  angel,  the 
survival  of  the  fittest.  Tennyson,  who  is  up  with  the 
science  which  has  disclosed  the  seeming  severity  of 
universal  law,  is  also  far-sighted  enough  to  sing  the 
triumph  of  goodness  through  the  sovereignty  of 


282    PATHS    TO    THE    CITY    OF    GOD 

law.  He  goes  even  deeper  into  the  fact  of  suffering 
than  any  other,  save  Browning.  He  even  questions, 
if  with  this  frightful  death  of  the  unfit  there  is  a 
full  compensation  in  the  survival  of  the  fittest. 
Tennyson  is  affrighted  at  nature's  carelessness  of  a 
single  life,  and  more  so  at  the  seeming  carelessness 
which  natural  laws  show  for  everything. 

"  Are  God  and  Nature  then  at  strife, 
That  Nature  lends  such  evil  dreams  ? 
So  careful  of  the  type  she  seems, 
So  careless  of  the  single  life  ; 

**  That  I,  considering  everywhere. 
Her  secret  meaning  in  her  deeds, 
And  finding  that  of  fifty  seeds, 
She  often  brings  but  one  to  bear; 
I  falter  v^here  I  firmly  trod." 

Yes,  that  is  the  spot  in  thought  where  man  is 
likeliest  to  falter.  That  is  the  place  where  it  is 
hardest  to  "see  an  angel  standing  in  the  sun;"  that 
is  the  gloomiest  air  through  which  to  see  the  eternal 
goodness  in  the  severities  of  natural  law.  Why, 
nature  seems  not  only  to  sacrifice  the  single  life  to 
some  type  of  being,  but  ever  to  have  been  careless 
about  the  type  itself. 

"  So  careful  of  the  type?  but  no. 
From  scarped  cliff  and  quarried  stone. 
She  cries:  '  A  thousand  types  are  gone; 
I  care  for  nothing,  all  shall  go.' 

"  Thou  maltest  thine  appeal  to  me; 
I  bring  to  life,  I  bring  to  death; 
The  spirit  does  but  mean  the  breath; 
I  know  no  more." 


THE    ANGEL    IN    THE    SUN     283 

Right  here  Haeckel,  Schopenhauer,  and  Hartmann 
stop  to  preach  the  gospel  of  pessimism — that  this 
world  is  as  bad  as  it  can  be.  They  see  the  golden 
sun,  as  a  golden  lie  to  mock  at  man,  who  feels 
blindly  for  an  immortal  life.  "Ah,"  says  this  dark 
gospel,  "have  you  not  had  all  the  existence  you 
want  ?" 

••  A  life 
With  large  results  so  little  rife. 
Though  bearable,  seems  hardly  worth 
This  pomp  of  words,  this  pain  of  birth." 

Underneath  in  mighty  peace,  overhead  in 
majestic  calm,  I  hear  a  deeper  thought — through 
less  baleful  skies  I  behold  in  the  glaring  sun  an 
angel.  The  argument  of  the  deepest  skepticism 
says:  "Everything  is  an  aim  at  something  which, 
so  far  as  we  see,  will  strike  nothing;  everything 
seems  moving  unsatisfied  toward  a  satisfaction 
which  as  yet  is  a  dream.  The  life  of  man  is  a 
bundle  of  motions  after  what  does  not  exist."  I 
reply  that  a  universe  cannot  hold  together  on  an 
illusion;  a  race  could  not  exist  for  so  long  on  a  lie. 
Let  us  accept  evolution  if  we  must;  what  then? 
Why,  the  motions  and  struggles  have  been  too  great 
and  sharp  to  have  proceeded  toward  nothing.  Evo- 
lution is  one  of  two  things.  Life  has  either  organized 
itself  into  a  human  soul  or  life  has  reached  up  and 
caught  hold  of  spirit,  and  with  divine  strength  it 
has  drawn  matter  up  with  itself.  In  all  the  past 
there  has  been  an  event  growing  more  and  more 
clear  as  time  went  on — an  event  toward  which  life 


284    PATHS    TO   THE    CITYj   OF    GOD 

jumped,  like  a  lover,  when  it  leaped  across  the  chasm 
between  the  monkey  and  the  man.  There  could  not 
be  an  aim  without  a  something  aimed  at,  else  how 
could  we  know  that  it  is  aimed?  Now,  suppose 
there  is  reason  for  doubting  the  event,  is  it  strong 
enough  to  over-ride  all  our  aims  at  the  event  ?  Shall 
we  believe  our  aims  or  our  doubts?  The  deeper 
thought  says  that  a  universe  of  the  unsatisfied 
would  be  a  great  minus  quantity.  It  could  not  exist. 
It  would  be  less  than  nothing,  and  nothing  is 
no-thing.  There  must  be  a  plus  somewhere,  to  at 
least  equal  this  minus.  The  Columbus  of  modern 
thinking  says:  "There  must  be  an  America  on  the 
other  side  to  balance." 

"  For  surely  there  is  hope  to  find 
Whatever  there  is  power  to  seek; 
And  we  could  never  think  or  speak 
Of  light,  had  we  from  birth  been  blind. 

*•  Man,  like  the  brutes,  yields  up  his  breath. 
Yet  not  like  them;  they  never  think, 
While  pausing  on  destruction's  brink, 
Of  life  unquenchable  by  death. 

*'  Must  he  but  share  the  reptile's  grave, 
Who  gazed  on  beauty  with  delight. 
Who  longed  for  knowledge,  fought  for  right, 
And  died,  his  fatherland  to  save  ?  " 

Triumphantly  thought  cries,  as  she  looks  into  the 
vexed  question  of  what  shall  be  the  outcome  of  the 
universe? — "there  cannot  be  more  of  the  negative 
than  of  the  positive;  the  light  must  be  equal  to  the 
darkness;  the  satisfaction  must  satisfy  the  unsatis- 
fied; the  universe  must  answer  to  itself  or  cease  to 


THE    ANGEL    IN    THE    SUN     285 

be,  and,  because  universal  annihilation  is  unthink- 
able, there  is 

"  One  far-off  Divine  event 
To  which  the  whole  creation  moves." 

In  the  blazing,  consuming  sun  stands  an  angel. 
The  sun  is  the  gold-tipped  point  of  God's  arrow, 
which  we  call  nature.  Long  ago  God's  bow-string 
twanged,  and  nature  was  sent  spinning  and  singing, 
hissing  and  gleaming,  toward  what  we  call  the 
supernatural.  The  life  that  now  is  was  shot,  with 
aim  unerring,  toward  the  life  to  be.  The  visible 
universe  is  the  divine  arrow  which  the  bow  of  God 
strained  to  send  to  capture  man,  whose  immortality 
would  heal  this  wound  and  acquaint  him  with  the 
realm  of  the  invisible  from  which  the  arrow  sped. 

How  all  along  the  way  which  man  has  trod,  to 
get  to  himself,  are  these  places  where  thought  will 
stop  to  mark  the  coming  of  the  event.  We  say 
to-day  that  nobility  does  not  come  to  a  man  so  much 
for  having  attained  something,  as  it  does  by  strug- 
gling after  it.  Character  comes  of  "the  struggle,  not 
the  prize."  Now  look  back  through  the  long  course 
of  nature.  These  laws  which  made  it  so  hard  for 
man  to  exist  at  all — the  severest  of  them  were  the 
ones  most  loaded  with  his  destiny.  The  hardest  to 
obey  was  the  safest  stone  he  could  risk  himself  upon. 
That  is  the  angel  in  the  sun — that  is  the  story  of 
natural  law.  The  event  toward  which  God  has 
aimed  is  so  intensely  important;  the  aim  is  so  direct 
and  so  heavily  loaded  with  the  Eternal  Goodness 


286    PATHS    TO   THE    CITY    OF   GOD 

that  the  track  along  which  it  flies  is  severely  taxed. 
It  is  always  flying;  nature  is  its  path,  being  as  it  is, 
natura  "the  about  to  he  horn."  Now  and  then  it 
looks  like  retrogression.  The  pterodactyls  and 
dinosaurians  have  ceased  to  exist,  and  thus  the  two 
highest  orders  of  reptiles  have  departed.  But  the 
aim  of  God  was  sure.  Birds  have  superseded  the 
pterodactyls,  and  mammals  have  walked  in  the  wake 
of  the  dinosaurians.  The  great  nature  which  be- 
came the  graveyard  of  the  lower  became  the  cradle 
of  the  higher.    An  angel  stood  in  the  sun. 

But  as  to  the  growth  and  future  of  our  personal 
character  we  have  the  same  questions  to  answer. 
The  laws  of  character-growth  seem  cruel.  A  dread 
being  often  seems  to  be  standing  in  the  sun. 

Now  as  man  gathers  up  into  his  spiritual  self  all 
the  laws,  forces,  and  operations  of  the  physical 
world,  because  he  is  its  loftiest  result,  its  highest 
specimen,  its  microcosm,  so  what  we  call  human 
character  must  be  expected  to  take  in,  as  its  pro- 
duction goes  on,  to  include  in  its  growth  all  the 
mysterious  severities,  all  the  dark  sorrows,  all  the 
mighty  refinings  which  are  found  in  the  world 
where  mind  urges  on  its  triumphant  issue  in  the 
struggle  with  matter  for  pre-eminence.  A  step  in 
advance  of  that — as  the  human  body  must  have 
run  a  braver  career  in  its  evolution  than  that  which 
is  below  it — so  character,  beautiful,  everlasting, 
supreme  character  must  welcome  the  ladder  of 
severe  struggle  as  its  starward  path.  The  sun  stands 
for  that  environment  which  the  human  mind  has. 


THE    ANGEL    IN    THE    SUN     287 

of  forces,  traditions,  facts,  appearances,  phenomena, 
and  laws  which  we  call  nature.  And,  sad  as  life  is, 
deep  as  are  the  abysses  of  mystery  behind  it,  and 
before  it,  fierce  as  those  yearnings  for  something — 
I  see  this  morning,  "an  angel  standing  in  the  sun." 
Behind  and  peering  through  the  inflexible  reign  of 
law  I  behold  the  Eternal  Goodness.  I  know  the 
pressure  of  this  problem  of  existence.  No  sensitive 
soul  ever  lived  who  did  not  wonder  what  the  out- 
come of  the  universe  would  be.  No  thoughtful 
being  but  now  and  then,  like  Jesus,  saw  coming  a 
terror  that  it  did  not  understand,  and  said :  "Let  this 
cup  pass  from  me."  And  yet  the  best  minds,  like 
the  Christ,  have  so  felt  that  within  the  sun  stood 
an  angel,  in  darkness  hid  the  Eternal,  that  they 
said,  pouring  their  sincerest  life  into  it:  ^^Neverthe- 
less— not  as  I  will,  but  as  Thou  wilt."  The 
supremacy  of  the  divine  will  seemed  the  only  safety. 
The  continuance  of  the  divine  government,  even 
through  darkness,  seemed  the  only  righteousness. 
Oh,  we  say:  "The  times  are  out  of  joint,"  and  we 
wonder  if  eternity  is  not  broken  in  upon  by  the 
sadness  of  the  present  outlook.  Goodness  seems  so 
costly  a  prize  to  reach,  in  the  currents  of  human  life; 
yet  every  poet  who  tuned  his  harp,  not  more  on 
Parnassus  than  on  Calvary,  has  sung : 

*'  Right  forever  on  the  scaffold,  wrong  forever  on  the  throne, 
Yet  that  scaffold  sways  the  future,  and  behind  the  dim 

unknown 
Standeth  God  within  the  shadow,  keeping  watch  above  his 
own." 


288    PATHS    TO   THE    CITY   OF   GOD 

It  is  said  that  right  is  "on  the  scaffold."    It  only 

comes  out  well  when  we  see  that  that  "scaffold 

sways  the  future."    It  is,  oh,  so  darkly  problematic 

that  there  is  a  "dim  unknown"  for  man  to  sing 

about.    It  becomes  a  resplendent  fact  only  when  we 

find  out  that 

"  Behind  the  dim  unknown 
Standeth  God  within  the  shadow,  keeping  watch  above  his 
own." 

It  is  a  suggestive  fact  that  the  religious  system 
which  makes  so  much  of  human  character  should 
count  on  all  the  future  as  one  of  the  factors  in  its 
problem,  and  rely  on  eternity  as  a  factor  in  the 
solution  of  the  universe.  The  thought  of  Christ 
when  its  strength  fell  upon  the  problem  of  human 
character  looked  with  half-startled  faith  for  an 
eternity,  just  as  when  you  see  the  beginning  of  a 
mighty  steamer,  you  look  for  an  ocean  upon  which 
it  may  sail.  Thought  in  all  ages  has  found  man, 
and  said  immediately:  "There  is  an  infinity  of  life 
lying  around  somewhere  and  it  is  for  him."  And 
this  eternity  is  the  constant  demand  of  the  universe's 
unsolved  problems.  Infinite  opportunity  to  grow 
and  to  be  is  the  perpetual  expectation  which  we 
dream  of  so  fondly,  while  this  world's  beginnings 
seem  to  include  all  that  we  see.  Of  these  unsolved 
problems,  of  these  beginnings,  our  life  is  chief.  Its 
large  environment  is  all  things  else.  Its  huge 
circumstance  is  this  boundless  universe.  Penetrated 
as  it  is  with  inflexible  law,  ruled  as  its  surroundings 
are  with  law,  aimed  as  it  is — higher  than  all  else. 


THE   ANGEL   IN   THE    SUN    289 

at  an  infinite  risk — aimed  at  a  star  which  we  name 
GodHkeness,  a  star  which  Jesus  found  swimming 
in  His  telescope — shall  it  ever  seem  too  much  that 
the  laws  of  the  universe  which  bear  that  rich  burden 
run  too  far  out  of  our  sight?  Shall  it  ever  be  that 
we,  who  ask  for  an  eternity  in  which  to  ripen,  shall 
lose  faith  in  its  infinite  grasp,  or  doubt  but  that  the 
infinite  time  shall  catch  and  keep  every  loss? 

But  in  this  appeal  to  eternity  which  we  make, 
let  us  not  fail  to  see  how  these  laws  of  life,  which 
seem  so  cruel,  were  always  asking  for  an  eternity 
in  which  they  might  produce  their  results.  For 
my  part,  in  the  recent  days,  I  have  found  the  con- 
solation of  life  in  what  men  call  the  severity  of  law. 
I  seem  to  see  that  what  we  call  the  severity  of  the 
laws  of  life  is  only  the  inflexible  determination  of 
our  Father  that  His  scheme  of  universal  triumph 
shall  not  fail.  In  the  fierce  glare  of  the  sun,  brighter 
than  it  is,  stands  the  angel.  That  angel  looks  upon 
woes  deeper  than  earth's  caverns,  and  lifts  his  eyes 
to  compute  the  height  to  which  tides  of  glory  shall 
rise  that  issue  from  these  dark  caves.  God  is  the 
prophet  of  human  nature.  I  look  at  His  calcula- 
tions and  am  astonished  at  the  large  figures.  I  peer 
into  natural  law  and  find  that  its  severity  is  only 
the  mark  of  His  love  for  me — yea,  His  determina- 
tion that  there  shall  be  no  hole  in  His  providence 
through  which  a  human  soul  may  fall,  no  crack  in 
the  universe  in  or  through  which  a  defeat  may  come. 
And  yet  I  say:  "I  cannot  explain  things  even  by 
that  idea."    Ah,  yes,  short-sighted  soul  that  I  am, 


290    PATHS    TO   THE    CITY    OF   GOD 

God  puts  me  off  until  eternity.  Like  my  mother, 
who  used  to  say,  "Wait  until  you  wake  in  the 
morning;  you're  too  tired  now."  Oh,  my  hearers, 
when  God  says,  "Wait  until  the  morning  of  eternity, 
when  death  has  rested  you,  and  you  have  risen  into 
the  new  life,"  why,  it  means  that  there  is  an  eternity 
for  me,  a  morning  for  me,  when  I  shall  touch  the 
hand  and  hear  the  very  voice  of  the  angel  which  in 
tears  I  saw  standing  in  the  sun. 


XV 
A   GOOD   OLD   AGE 

"  Died  in  a  good  old  age."    Genesis  xxv.  8. 

"  Being  such  an  one  as  Paul  the  aged."    Philemon  g. 

I  GREET  you  as  companions  and  friends  who 
are  growing  old.  The  baby  whom  you  just  left 
at  home  gave  you  hints  of  his  on-coming  an- 
tiquity, as  he  spoke  your  name  for  the  first  time,  or 
laughed  without  mechanical  intervention  of  yours; 
and  you  were  proud  of  thinking  of  him  while  he  thus 
accumulated  testimony  to  your  own  advancing  age. 
You  have  caressed  your  little  girl  this  morning 
because  of  the  half-humorous  signs  she  has  given 
you  of  the  coming  woman.  It  was  sweet  in  her  to 
indicate  thus  gracefully  her  growing  nearness  to  an 
old  lady's  chair  or  crutch.  Your  boy  attracted  your 
special  applause  on  the  way  hither  by  his  effort  to 
be  manly,  if  only  that  he  rejoiced  to  be  out  of 
dresses.  It  was  a  kind  way  of  telling  you  that  he 
was  growing  old  with  you — a  little  behind  in  the 
procession,  but  that  you  were  moving  on  together. 
The  hundreds  of  the  young  men  and  women  who 
have  already  learned  much  of  the  paths  of  trade  and 
the  movements  of  the  world,  or  who  have  found 
their  way  by  means  of  books  into  other  centuries 
and  along  by  other  temples  in  their  student  life — 

291 


292    PATHS    TO    THE    CITY    OF   GOD 

the  ones  we  are  proudest  of,  they  have  won  our 
laurels  by  witnessing,  in  their  very  victories,  to  an 
advance  toward  white  hairs  and  wrinkled  foreheads. 
No  other  characteristic  of  human  life  can  keep  this 
less  severely  true  for  all  of  us;  our  yesterdays  have 
made  us  old.  A  woman  may  fret  with  even  more 
than  ordinary  sensitiveness  as  to  the  chronology  of 
her  life,  and  for  her  sake  the  neighbors  may  agree 
never  to  ask  her  of  her  age.  Time  will  not  keep  his 
word,  though  Time  be  never  so  silent.  He  will  wash 
the  hair  white  with  the  stream  of  yesterdays,  or  pull 
it  out  entirely,  and  he  may  run  wrinkles  over  the 
soul,  if  the  forehead  is  kept  smooth  with  a  too 
desperate  vigilance. 

Dear  devotee  of  what  has  forever  gone,  you  are 
a  lover  of  youth !  What  a  painful  discovery  to  you 
in  manly  prime  was  the  first  whitened  hair!  It 
rested  on  your  broadcloth  like  a  weight  insupport- 
able. It  meant  so  much  that  you  did  not  care  to 
believe;  it  meant  so  much  that  you  would  not  have 
others  believe,  but  you  swiftly  read  in  its  silvery 
eloquence  that  you  were  growing  old,  and  asked  the 
children  to  look  over  your  head,  in  order  that  upon 
your  own  shoulders,  or  upon  anybody  else's  mind, 
there  might  not  fall  so  soon  such  another  testimony 
to  this  fact  that  you  are  really  aging. 

"  We  feel  the  rush  of  waves  that  round  us  rise, 
The  tossing  of  our  boats  upon  the  sea, 
Few  sunbeams  linger  in  the  stormy  skies, 
And  youth's  bright  shore  is  lessening  on  the  lee." 

Some  of  us  have  the  unpleasant  memory  of 


A    GOOD    OLD    AGE  293 

having  been  compelled,  years  ago,  to  do  such  an 
ungenerous  thing  as  to  put  in  diagram  the  sentence : 
"Old  age  is  dark  and  unlovely."  Old  age  can  never 
wring  admiration  from  youth.  It  does  seem  a  very 
unfit  close  for  a  song  which  began  softly  with  lyric 
note  and  prophetic  tones.  That  weakness  should 
come  at  the  end  of  life,  so  much  like  the  weakness  of 
the  beginning,  that  grandfather  is  left  to  watch  the 
baby  and  the  baby  is  left  to  watch  grandpa,  seems  to 
indicate  little  gain  for  the  harvester  who  has  trod 
wearily  over  the  fields  of  eighty  summers.  It  is, 
however,  the  testimony  of  life  to  a  brighter  truth 
than  such  musing  would  put  beneath  our  careers, 
and  that  brighter  truth  is  a  part  of  the  sentence 
which  used  to  hang  in  Sir  William  Hamilton's 
lecture-room:  "There  is  nothing  great  in  man  but 
mind."  Old  age  makes  pathetic  witness  as  the  castle 
goes  to  pieces,  revealing  such  splendid  plans  and 
such  noble  labors,  of  its  having  been  for  these  years 
of  growth  and  decline  a  temple  for  the  soul-treasure 
about  which  it  came  to  be.  If  man  were  physical 
only,  old  age  would  be  a  self-conscious  woe. 

Youth  beholds  an  indubitable  truth  seeking  to 
utter  itself  more  eloquently  in  the  toothless  orator 
with  a  broken  voice  and  a  trembling  form.  "Old 
age  is  still  old  age."  The  senses  are  dull.  The 
avenues  along  whose  firmness  and  beauty  came 
visiting  truths  and  cargoes  of  good  are  broken  a 
little  and  uncared  for;  and  the  ear  and  nostril  and 
eye  and  tongue  and  fingers,  the  gateways  of  entrance 
upon  these  avenues  to  the  soul,  are  not  so  easily 


294    PATHS    TO    THE    CITY    OF    GOD 

passed  as  in  years  agone.  So  the  soul,  yet  staying 
in  the  body,  has  become  isolated,  just  as  a  man 
becomes  detached  from  the  great  life  which  rushes 
past  when  the  lane  to  his  house  is  closed  up.  It  is 
no  longer  a  joy  to  breathe.  The  very  air  which  once 
was  so  free  gets  a  little  expensive  or  unmanageable 
as  if  it  did  not  like  to  go  in  and  out  of  the  old  haunts. 
Thought  no  more  seems  luxuriant  and  rich,  ideas 
come  less  constantly  to  recreate  life  and  the  world, 
and,  when  they  do  come,  they  no  longer  leap  for 
expression,  but  rather  desire  to  remain  unexpressed 
along  with  the  aches  and  pains  of  which  no  one 
cares  to  hear. 

And  then  we  picture  old  age,  with  its  shrunken 
power  and  form,  unable  to  catch  the  real  music  of 
the  time.  Old  melodies  of  other  days,  heard  when 
other  elders  were  lamenting  the  discords  of  their 
time,  alone  are  heard,  and  the  degenerate  present 
often  comes  up  before  a  judge  who  is  anchored  to  a 
past  which  never  granted  it  leave  to  be.  The  past  is 
gone,  yet  old  age  makes  of  its  years  harpstrings. 

"  And  so  the  broken  harp  they  bring 

With  pitying  smiles  that  none  could  blame, 
Alas!  there's  not  a  single  string 
Of  all  that  filled  the  tarnished  frame. 

"  Ah!  smile  not  at  his  fond  conceit, 

Nor  deem  his  fancy  wrought  in  vain; 

To  him  the  unreal  sounds  are  sweet, 
No  discord  mars  the  silent  strain, 

Scored  on  life's  latest,  starlit  page — 
The  voiceless  melody  of  age." 

Add  to  the  pathos  of  this  the  fact  that  it  is 


A   GOOD    OLD    AGE  295 

impossible  to  call  back  the  old  fragrance  of  the 
flowers,  the  pristine  beauty  of  the  sky,  the  vanished 
presence  of  friend  and  lover,  the  abundant  hope  and 
passionate  courage  of  youth,  that  life's  boundaries 
are  in  sight,  and  ambition  must  be  restrained  to  the 
near  horizon,  that  the  failing  power  must  be  used 
with  deliberate  economy,  that  the  places  which  shall 
never  be  seen  again  are  multiplying  as  the  days  grow 
few — remember  these,  and  you  have  some  of  the 
losses  of  old  age. 

Old  age,  looked  at  in  this  way,  is  a  tomb,  some- 
times poor  and  unmarked,  with  no  clambering  vines 
about  it  to  hide  its  ghastliness,  with  not  a  single 
tearful  visitor;  a  tomb  sometimes  rich  with  archi- 
tectural splendor,  written  over  with  memories, 
covered  with  lovely  vines  and  crowded  about  with 
mourners;  but  it  appears  a  tomb,  nevertheless,  in 
which  lie  buried  childhood's  innocence  and  charms, 
youth's  hopes  and  dreams,  the  power  and  fervor, 
the  aims  and  plans  of  middle  life — the  treasure- 
house  where  helplessness  is  alone  with  useless  riches. 
Is  this  all?  No.  Let  us  thank  God!  No:  over 
the  cold  marble  front  of  old  age  the  spirit  of  God 
writes  the  words  of  Jesus,  "I  am  the  resurrection 
and  the  life/'  and  into  this  tomb  which  we  dread, 
this  Lord  of  life  goes,  to  fill  its  every  chamber  with 
eternal  youth. 

In  the  light  of  Christ  and  His  religion,  every 
period  of  human  life  is  instinct  with  particular 
privilege  and  capable  of  reflecting  its  own  unique 
glory.    Indeed,  life  seems  oftentimes  like  a  many- 


296    PATHS    TO    THE    CITY    OF   GOD 

keyed  organ,  whose  banks  of  keys  are  childhood, 
youth,  manhood,  and  age.  Shakespeare  saw  seven 
rows  of  keys  without  any  one  of  which  it  is  impos- 
sible to  make  the  full  melody.  Certain  it  is  that 
God  has  blessed  every  stage  of  life  with  particular 
grace  and  visited  each  era  of  our  earthly  careers 
with  special  benedictions.  Man  was  meant  to  live 
his  old  age  with  the  harvest  of  each  preceding  field, 
all  of  it  sown  as  seed  and  ripening  upon  this  last. 
Sin  has  done  no  more  evident  disaster  than  to  have 
prevented  any  soul  from  gaining  all  the  long  culture 
of  earth,  a  culture  in  which  every  lingering  day 
should  crystallize  into  wisdom  and  power  the  ex- 
perience of  all  yesterdays  behind  it.  But  sin  has 
not  ruined  it  all.  Much  remains.  May  we  find  in 
the  treasures  left,  the  qualities  of  a  good  old  age. 

I.  I  remark,  in  the  first  place,  that  the  prime 
creative  force  of  good  old  age  is  faith.  Abraham, 
who  is  said  in  our  text  to  have  "died  in  a  good  old 
age/'  was  the  "father  of  the  faithful."  Paul,  our 
other  illustration,  was,  and  yet  is,  faith's  most  dis- 
tinguished champion.  The  force,  in  both  men,  which 
kept  the  heart-beats  strong,  full,  and  regular,  in 
spite  of  advancing  years,  was  faith.  Faith  kept  the 
stream  of  life  full  of  "the  murmurs  and  scents  of  the 
Infinite  Sea,"  and  it  had  impulse  enough  to  carry 
out  all  the  wastes.  Faith  kept  in  their  souls  the 
persuasion  that  clouds  which  hid  the  sky  and  sun 
were  affairs  of  the  earth,  and  that  beyond  them  were 
a  clear  sky  and  a  cloudless  sun.  This  temper  of 
mind,  this  spirit  of  trustfulness,  first  manifested 


A    GOOD    OLD    AGE  297 

itself  as  faith  in  God.  Abraham  and  Paul  "believed 
God." 

God  is  the  reality  after  which  all  the  tendrils  of 
genuine  faith  run.  An  abiding  interest  in  such  a 
fact  as  the  infinite  God  is  itself  a  fountain  of  youth. 
There  is  such  a  vast  distance  between  the  limited 
finite  soul  of  a  man  and  the  limitless  God  that  the 
mind  which  sets  out  seriously  Godward  is  drawn 
into  a  journey  which  lasts  through  all  its  years,  and 
keeps  it  youthful  with  enthusiasm  and  active  with 
hope.  Winter-time  may  leave  flake  after  flake  of 
white  in  such  a  man's  hair,  but  the  heart  is  so  warm 
that  it  gathers  no  snows  of  age  which  it  does  not 
melt.  Many  a  man  never  loses  his  youth  because 
into  his  spirit  there  came  in  early  days  a  life  which 
reached  out  toward  the  eternal  God,  and  this  ever- 
expanding  life  has  given  to  him  a  constant  growth, 
and  because,  at  eighty,  God  is  still  expanding  him 
by  new  revelations,  so  for  him  there  is  no  old  age. 
Death  comes;  and  it  detains  him  just  long  enough 
to  exchange  worlds.  Victor  Hugo  said :  "I  shall  go 
to  work  again  in  the  morning," 

This  realization  of  God  is  the  one  effective  break- 
water against  the  changes  in  life.  If  a  soul  has  a 
keener  perception  of  the  changes  about  him  than  that 
soul  has  of  the  permanency  beneath  them,  youth  is 
clouded,  middle  life  is  pessimistic,  old  age  is  terrible. 

Faith  in  God,  as  the  one  changeless  fact  in  all 
the  changing  universe,  is  the  spring  of  genuine 
youth.  Pitiful,  indeed,  is  age  leaning  on  its  staff 
in  the  midst  of  a  scene  from  which  everything  it 


298    PATHS    TO    THE    CITY    OF    GOD 

knows  well  is  swiftly  retreating-,  its  staff  rotting  in 
its  hand,  its  voice  of  lamentation  lost  in  the  crowd, 
with  no  vision  of  a  changeless  God.  Deeper  still 
grows  the  agony  when  faithless  age  sits  by  the 
roadside  and -beholds  the  hurrying  throng,  only  to 
note  how  man,  like  nature,  with  new  questions  to 
answer  and  new  plans  to  pursue,  has  changed. 
Still  more  profoundly  does  the  sorrow  reach,  when 
age  pushes  back  its  silver  locks  and  gazes  out  again 
from  weary  eyes,  and  listens  again  with  heavy  ear 
to  hear  no  changeless  voice,  or  see  no  unvarying  face 
of  God,  but  rather  to  realize  that  change  has  seized 
its  very  citadel  and  fortress  and  will  soon  level  them 
with  the  grave. 

Man  is  by  nature  so  sublime  a  creature  that  the 
only  reality  in  the  universe  he  can  safely  cling  to, 
as  changes  in  the  scene,  changes  in  humanity, 
changes  in  himself  come,  is  God  Almighty.  Get 
hold  of  the  changeless  hand;  lift  up  your  soul  and  let 
its  tendrils  of  trustfulness  twine  around  the  perma- 
nent grandeur  of  the  Great  White  Throne.  No 
human  being  can  come  to  old  age  without  the  sweet- 
ening influence  of  a  trust  in  God  who  will  not  be 
shaken  in  the  very  spirit  of  faith  with  what  the  long 
years  seem  to  teach  him  about  the  easy  transform- 
ableness  of  man  and  the  changing  fortunes  of  him- 
self. Pessimism — that  horror  of  youth,  that  demon 
of  old  age — pessimism  which  binds  its  slave  to  his 
task  of  condemnation  and  enchains  its  victim  to  the 
prison  which  has  no  sky,  is  on  the  track  of  every 
man  or  woman,  who,  above  and  behind  all  that  man 


A    GOOD    OLD    AGE  299 

has  3one  or  may  do,  does  not  behold  an  Almighty- 
Goodness  whose  name  is  God.  Much  we  leave 
behind  us.  Yonder,  in  sunny  youth,  a  lover;  away 
down  yonder  fell  from  your  arms  a  little  child; 
away  there  you  behold  the  grave  of  a  friend — so 
much  more  gone,  but  you  have  all  if  you  have  not 
lost  God. 

2.  This  faith  in  God  manifests  itself  as  faith  in 
humanity.  There  can  be  no  real  belief  in  the  future 
of  man,  here  or  elsewhere,  which  does  not  spring  out 
of  faith  in  God.  And  without  faith  in  humanity, 
old  age  is  a  helpless  convict,  walled  about  with  ruins 
the  most  dismal,  of  an  experiment  the  most  awful 
which  the  mind  can  imagine.  On  the  other  hand, 
a  real  faith  in  man,  flowing  from  a  faith  in  the 
Father  of  humanity,  bubbles  up  like  a  spring  in  the 
desert  of  age  to  cool  the  parched  sands  and  supply 
the  thirsty  soul.  That  there  is  a  divine  meaning  in 
life,  in  the  life  of  the  lowest  man;  that  every  force 
of  the  universe  is  set  to  make  this  concealed  gem  of 
good  flash  out  its  light;  that  every  power  of  love  in 
heaven  and  earth  will  ply  its  energies  to  the  evolu- 
tion of  the  angel  from  the  brute;  that  it  is  not  an 
even  chance  between  good  and  evil  with  respect  to 
his  soul;  that  the  whole  set  of  things  is  for  goodness; 
that  God  has  manifested  His  interest  in  this  matter 
at  an  awful  sacrifice; — ^be  sure  of  this :  the  man  who 
really  has  these  ideas  at  the  core  of  his  life  will  feel 
the  renewals  of  hope  day  by  day ;  youth  of  soul  will 
be  his  forever,  and  old  age  will  be  an  autumn  time 
in  which  he  may  gather  the  fruit  of  his  faith. 


300    PATHS    TO    THE    CITY,   OF    GOD 

3,  "A  good  old  age"  is  thus  an  old  age  which, 
by  the  influence  of  great  ideas,  has  attached  the  gains 
of  experience  each  to  the  other,  so  that  at  last  they 
have  made  life  a  unit.  Experiences  enough  we  all 
have  had  to  have  made  us  rich  in  wisdom.  But,  I 
fancy,  they  have  yielded  no  permanent  gain  to  us, 
because  we  had  no  place  for  the  gains.  They  have 
been  like  beautiful  gems;  we  have  had  no  strings  on 
which  to  gather  and  string  them,  and  one  by  one  they 
have  been  lost.  Noble  thoughts  are  the  strings  on 
which  we  keep  the  events  of  life  together.  Ideas  are 
pegs  upon  which  we  hang  our  experiences.  Great 
ideas  will  take  and  hold  a  whole  life's  experiences. 
The  man  who  is  surest  to  find,  after  a  while  in  his 
old  age,  the  most  of  wisdom  is  he  who  has  now  ideas 
great  enough  to  run  all  through  his  life — ideas  under 
which  he  may  classify  his  experiences.  One  of  the 
great  thoughts  which  has  made  many  an  old  age  a 
throne  of  glory  is  this :  "God  is  the  author  and  im- 
pulse of  a  great  movement  in  the  universe  in  which 
I  live.  That  movement  is  the  one  fact  which  hinds 
age  to  age  and  is  the  soul  of  history.  I  shall  league 
my  life  with  that  movement  zvhich  runs  so  szviftly 
toward  eternal  good."  To  a  young  man  who  seri- 
ously puts  that  conception  of  life  in  his  heart,  there 
is  no  dolorous,  broken  age.  He  is  moving  with  the 
youth  and  hope  of  God.  He  has  none  of  the 
wretched  self-consciousness  of  a  man  who,  like  a 
fragment,  has  kept  his  life  for  itself,  and  feels  him- 
self thrown  aside  in  the  universe.  Nay!  He 
sings : 


A   GOOD    OLD    AGE  301 

"  I  doubt  not  through  the  ages  one  increasing  purpose  runs  ; 
And  the  thoughts  of  men  are  widened  with  the  process  of 

the  Suns." 

If  ever  there  was  a  grand  old  age  it  was  that  o£ 
Moses;  yet  the  intense  beauty  of  his  declining  day 
came  from  that  living  unity  which  his  life,  with  its 
countless  events,  had,  and  that  consciousness  that  his 
life  had  been  caught  within  the  moving  life  of  God 
in  human  history.  When  God  was  about  ready  to 
bury  his  weary  body  with  funeral  rites  to  which 
He  alone  would  attend,  Moses  looked  back  past  the 
contentions  and  hosannas  of  life,  past  the  plains  of 
Moab,  over  Mount  Seir  and  Mount  Sinai,  through 
the  wilderness  of  Paran  and  the  wilderness  of  Shur, 
yea,  through  the  Red  Sea,  back  to  that  burning 
bush,  where  his  life  got  hold  of  a  great  idea — an 
idea  long  enough  and  strong  enough  to  bind  its 
days  and  years  together,  as  the  many  leaves  of  a 
book  are  kept  together  by  a  clasp  of  gold;  and  at 
life's  close  his  prayer  was  ''for  the  good  will  of  Him 
zvho  dwelt  in  the  bush."  Into  that  age  there  had 
gone  no  hardness  and  forgetting  of  the  truth  which 
had  kept  life  fresh  and  buoyant  all  along.  The  last 
day  of  the  last  year  sparkled  with  the  deepest  mean- 
ing with  which  the  noonday  of  life  was  made 
radiant.  Moses  had  yielded  himself  at  the  burning 
bush  to  the  sovereignty  of  a  master  idea,  and  it 
bound  the  fragments  of  busy  manhood  and  happy 
age  into  unity.  The  same  is  true  of  Gladstone,  who, 
at  eighty-five,  made  his  plea  for  the  stricken 
Armenians. 


302    PATHS    TO    THE    CITY    OF    GOD 

I  have  two  portraits  of  Waldo  Emerson,  who 
was,  in  some  respects,  the  finest  soul  of  our  American 
literature.  One  is  a  picture  of  strong  manhood;  the 
other  a  picture  of  weak  old  age.  One  gleam  of 
beauty  and  power,  however,  breaks  forth  from  both 
faces.  It  has  given  me  again  and  again  a  perception 
of  what  his  works  reveal  of  the  unity  of  his  life — 
a  unity  whose  strength  was  to  be  found  in  a  great 
conception  of  life,  which  was  with  him,  early  and 
late,  a  silver  cord  running  through  the  warp  and 
woof  of  days  and  years,  and  putting  the  last  day  in 
sympathetic  belongings  with  the  first.  One  great 
theme — like  that  theme  of  a  few  bars  of  music  in 
one  of  Wagner's  works,  to  which  the  calms  and 
storms  always  come,  to  which  the  wandering  ideas 
all  are  to  return;  a  theme  which  rides  on  every 
wave  and  billow  of  sound  and  echoes  in  every 
silence;  a  theme  of  which  the  many  involved 
melodies  are  but  the  elaborate  outworking — this 
possessed  him. 

There  is  no  old  age  to  such  a  soul.  He  had  been 
so  in  the  habit  of  seeing  beauty  that,  through  the 
chinks  which  the  storm  made  in  his  house,  as  the 
blasts  of  winter  shook  it,  he  looked  out  for  and  saw 
only  the  beautiful.  When  his  memory  had  failed, 
he  turned  away  from  looking  on  the  dead  face  of 
his  friend,  Longfellow,  and  said  to  a  friend  who 
attended  him:  "That  gentleman  was  a  beautiful 
soul;  but  I  have  forgotten  his  name."  The  ever 
young  angel  of  beauty  stays  with  a  soul  who  likes  to 
look  at  the  treasures  she  so  loves  to  show  him;  and 


A   GOOD    OLD   AGE  303 

when  age  comes,  and  everyone  else  goes  on  the  hunt 
for  younger  society,  this  spirit  of  beauty  spends  the 
long  and  lonely  days  and  nights  with  him  who  has 
learned  her  secret  and  caught  her  immortal  youth. 

Oh,  let  us  save  ourselves  from  a  peevish,  rasping 
temper  of  mind  which  goes  down  to  life's  west 
window,  protesting  at  every  step  and  struggling 
against  the  setting  sun — a  temper  which  finally 
makes  us  sit  down  and  count  nothing  but  the  snow- 
flakes  as  they  drift  across  the  red  sunset  glow  and 
pile  up  on  our  window  sill.  There  is  just  one 
security  against  listening  to  the  moan  of  the  evening 
wind,  and  that  is  to  have  such  a  perpetual  morning 
tide  within  the  breast,  that  its  minor  tones  are  all 
prophecies  of  how  surely  the  sun,  which  has  just 
gone  down,  will  make  morning  elsewhere.  There  is 
immortal  youth  in  every  good  cause,  in  every 
genuine  truth.  He  who  has  kept  the  society  of 
good  causes  has  their  imperviousness  to  decay. 

There  is  no  such  pitiful  sight  in  this  universe  as 
a  human  being  who  has  lived  a  life  in  a  world  like 
this,  where  right  and  wrong,  truth  and  error,  are  in 
deadly  conflict,  who  has  never  allied  himself  with 
the  causes  that  are  ever  young  and  the  enterprises 
of  the  human  soul  which  never  grow  old;  who  on  the 
other  hand  finds  himself,  when  he  is  near  the  grave, 
with  a  lot  of  broken  dreams,  rotten  schemes,  decayed 
plans,  worn-out  methods,  mechanical  appliances 
for  human  life  which  were  behind  the  times  before 
they  were  dreamed  of,  theories  of  liberty  and  law 
which  were  archaic  when  they  first  came  to  him,  the 


304    PATHS    TO    THE    CITY    OF    GOD 

trumpery  and  garret  gatherings  for  which  there  is 
no  future.  It  is  likely  that  we  shall  never  see  any- 
thing more  dreadfully  sad  than  an  old  age  sitting 
and  gloomily  berating  the  times  and  the  men  who 
see  no  place  in  the  diadem  of  progress  for  the  dear 
old  paste  diamonds  which  they  have  guarded  so 
long.  The  weakest  thing  in  the  whole  universe  is 
a  human  being  battered  with  the  storms  of  years, 
worn  and  weary,  pushing  at  a  useless  craft  on  which 
there  are  no  passengers,  a  craft  bound  up  stream. 
And  that  is  old  age  which  has  its  heart  in  partner- 
ship with  the  progress  of  bad  causes.  Get  yourself 
allied  with  noble  aims. 

For  fifty  years  liberty  for  slaves  in  Europe  and 
America  has  been  coming  with  the  returning  morn- 
ings. Many  an  old  man  has  been  a  believer  in 
slavery.  For  fifty  years  a  greater  tolerance  of 
opinion,  a  deeper  faith  in  essential  truth,  and  a  cor- 
responding carelessness  for  the  incidental  form  of 
truth  have  been  gaining  ground;  but  he  has  been 
a  formalist  and  a  bigot,  and  he  holds  on  to  his 
antiques  with  the  grip  of  a  dying  man.  For  fifty 
years  an  intellectual  morning  has  been  growing  to 
noonday ;  but  he  has  been  a  man  who  has  lived  with 
those  of  his  ancestors  who  have  clung  to  the  mid- 
night with  its  waning  ideals.  Oh,  how  dreadfully 
severe  are  the  chariots  of  human  progress  as  they 
roll  on  over  his  prejudices,  when  he  has  to  sit  by 
and  can  do  nothing  but  wonder  so  sadly.  From 
such  a  man's  gloomy  age,  so  pessimistic,  so  sure 
that  things  are  growing  worse  as  time  goes  on,  let 


A    GOOD    OLD    AGE  305 

us  learn  at  least  one  duty:  To  identify  ourselves 
with  causes  of  truth,  schemes  of  liberty,  plans  of 
righteousness,  with  movements  of  mind  and  heart 
which  have  the  youth  and  promise  of  eternity  in 
them — an  eternity  which  will  have  room  enough  in 
it  for  a  man  growing  old  to  still  believe  in  his  ideal. 
The  elixir  of  life  lies  in  one's  ideal.  If  the  ideal 
is  high  enough  and  far  enough  from  our  present 
achievement  and  really  true,  it  will  furnish  the  wine 
of  youth  with  each  advancing  year.  Pity  for  the 
soul  who  sets  his  ideal  so  low  that  before  he  rounds 
the  century  it  is  realized,  and  he  is  left  in  age  alone 
without  an  ideal!  Pity  for  the  human  being  who 
had  an  ideal  which  never  wooed  his  very  best  spirit- 
ual powers,  so  that  when  the  body  begins  to  totter 
and  fall,  like  a  castle,  the  soul  had  no  interest  im- 
mortal and  radiant  which  shines  through  the  broken 
walls  and  gives  the  mind  illumination  in  its  loneli- 
ness !  Get  interested  in  fadeless  ideas ;  set  your  soul 
on  the  success  of  immortal  causes;  save  yourself 
from  a  grumbling,  sour  old  age  by  fastening  your 
hope,  in  youth  and  in  middle  life,  on  truths  which 
will  bring  their  ever-brightening  triumphs  to  your 
heart  as  you  sit  alone.    Then 

"  An  old  age,  serene  and  bright, 
And  lovely  as  a  Lapland  night, 
Shall  lead  thee  to  thy  grave." 

4.  But  this  leads  me  to  say  that  a  goo'd  old  age 
is  an  old  age  with  the  memory  of  a  well-spent  life 
behind  it.  Our  experiences  make  our  eyes  to  a  great 
extent.      We   look   westward   with   a   moral   and 


306    PATHS    TO   THE    CITY    OF   GOD 

mental  eyesight  which  we  have  won  and  which  came 
out  of  the  past,  which  is  very  dear  to  old  age  as  it 
turns  to  look  eastward.  The  evil  which  we  winked 
at  clouds  our  vision  later  on ;  the  good  we  wept  for 
sympathetically  clarified  our  eyes.  This  influence 
of  the  past,  noble  or  ignoble,  not  only  enters  into 
character  and  shows  itself  in  weakness  or  power  in 
this  way;  but  Memory,  who  is  either  old  age's  angel 
or  demon,  continually  paints  it  all  over  for  the  lonely 
soul. 

"Youth  longs,  and  manhood  strives,  but  age  remembers, 
Sits  by  the  raked-up  ashes  of  the  past, 
Spreads  its  thin  hands  above  the  whitening  embers 
That  warm  its  creeping  life-blood  till  the  last." 

A  good  past  is  a  perpetual  source  of  pictures — 
a  lasting  book  of  suggestive  sketches,  jotted  down 
so  swiftly,  yet  so  surely,  as  youth  ran  away  and  age 
crept  on — sketches  that  old  age  with  weird  artistic 
power  uses,  from  which  it  may  create  mighty 
canvases,  which  memory  hangs  upon  the  solemn 
walls  of  the  soul,  that  its  house  may  be  beautiful. 
Memory,  it  has  been  hinted,  has  a  sublime  but  awful 
function  to  fulfill  when  Age  has  come.  She,  like 
the  precursor  of  the  Judgment  Day,  gets  the  old 
man  to  go  backward  with  a  strange  accuracy.  She 
takes  him  to  his  very  childhood  with  a  magic  power 
of  recollection,  leading  him  by  the  pathways  and 
scenes  which  he  had  forgotten,  as  he  thought,  until 
the  whole  book  of  life  is  opened  wide  and  every 
unconsciously  written  record  is  read  again.  That 
book  is  one  of  "the  books"  which  "shall  be  opened" 


A   GOOD    OLD    AGE  307 

— yea,  it  is  already  opened.  It  is  the  soul  preparing 
itself  for  the  judgment.  O  God!  that,  with  a  dark 
and  vicious  past,  the  awful  doom  could  not  wait  for 
death!  O  heaven!  that  when  a  heroic  true  past  is 
behind  old  age,  thou  sendest  memory  to  re-create  its 
roadways  and  line  them  with  the  old  sweet  flowers ! 

*'  How  sweet  at  set  of  sun 
To  gather  up  the  fair  laborious  day; 
To  have  struck  some  blow  for  right 
"With  tongue  or  pen ; 
To  have  smoothed  the  path  to  light 
For  wandering  men; 
To  have  chased  some  fiend  of  ill  away; 
A  little  backward  to  have  thrust 
The  instant  powers  of  Drink  and  Lust; 
To  have  borne  down  Giant  Despair, 
To  have  dealt  a  blow  at  Care ! 
How  sweet  to  light  again  the  glow 
Of  warmer  fires  than  youth's, 
Though  all  the  blood  runs  slow." 

God  help  us  all  to  put  a  noble  past  behind  us 
for  old  age  to  wander  in ! 

5.  "A  good  old  age"  is  an  old  age  conscious  of 
its  special  privileges  and  duties — the  everlasting 
time,  which  we  call  years;  a  height  for  discovery  of 
truth,  and  for  large  visions  of  God.  The  rough 
experiences  of  life  have  not  taken  away  the  telescope 
of  truth,  if  the  soul  ever  really  loved  truth.  The 
rare  calm  of  that  lofty  summit  is  favorable  to  a  mind 
which  has  learned  to  respect  itself  and  has  dared  to 
be  still,  that  it  might  listen  to  God.  The  passionless 
atmosphere,  where  no  gusty  winds  of  youth's  con- 
tending impulses  rage  around,  and  where  the  spring 


308    PATHS    TO    THE    CITY    OF    GOD 

at  the  mountain  top  is  so  unvisited  by  blasts  of  vain 
desire  that  it  mirrors  the  stars — that  air,  with 
"passion's  uneasy  nursHngs  rocked  to  sleep,"  is 
surely  a  truer  medium  for  the  delicate  sounds  and 
the  fine  tints  of  the  world  about  and  beyond.  Life 
can  now  be  looked  upon  by  one  for  whom  the  fight 
is  over.  Illusions  of  youth,  the  gilded  baubles  and 
the  hollow  noises,  the  false  hopes  and  the  wandering 
rushlights — these  are  appreciated  now  at  their  true 
worth.  Truth,  which  the  soul  always  had  an  interest 
in  for  what  it  might  buy  or  prevent — truth  may  now 
be  studied  and  loved  for  her  own  sake;  and  her 
acquaintance  may  be  made  as  one  makes  the  ac- 
quaintance of  another  at  the  beginning  of  a  long 
ocean  voyage;  as  one  whose  companionship  may  be 
pleasant,  and  whose  friendship  may  be  useful  on  the 
other  side.  These  are  only  some  of  the  facts  of  old 
age  which  have  made  the  psalmist  of  yesterday  sing : 

"  It  is  too  late!  Ah!  nothing  is  too  late 
Till  the  tired  heart  shall  cease  to  palpitate. 
Cato  learned  Greek  at  eighty;  Sophocles 
Wrote  his  grand  '  CEdipus,'  and  Simonides 
Bore  off  the  prize  of  verse  from  his  compeers. 
When  each  had  numbered  more  than  four-score  years. 
And  Theophrastus,  at  four-score  and  ten, 
Had  but  begun  his  '  Characters  of  Men '; 
Chaucer,  at  Woodstock,  with  the  nightingales, 
At  sixty  wrote  '  The  Canterbury  Tales; ' 
Goethe,  at  Weimar,  toiling  to  the  last, 
Completed  '  Faust '  when  eighty  years  were  past. 
These  are  indeed  exceptions;  but  they  show 
How  far  the  gulf  stream  of  our  youth  may  flow 
Into  the  Arctic  regions  of  our  lives, 
Where  little  else  than  life  itself  survives," 


A    GOOD    OLD    AGE  309 

6.  Let  us,  then,  fairly  face  the  fact  that  to  us 
"a  good  old  age"  means  a  Christian  old  age.  It 
means  an  old  age  made  graceful,  sweet,  strong, 
hopeful,  active,  and  happily  reminiscent  by  the 
masterful  working  of  God  in  the  mind  and  heart. 
We  need  someone  Whom  we  cannot  lose.  Who  will 
also  transform  our  losses  into  unquestionable  gains, 
else  old  age  will  come  to  the  grave  a  sighing  beggar. 
God  Almighty  is  the  One  Fact  and  Factor  which 
Love  can  lean  upon,  when  the  heart  is  torn  with  the 
loss  of  others.  God,  as  revealed  in  Jesus  Christ, 
our  Saviour,  is  the  one  skillful  artist  who  takes  the 
defeats  and  disasters  of  life  and  molds  them  over 
into  mental  and  moral  power.  The  greatest  privi- 
lege of  life  may  be  ours — to  feel  the  inflow  of  God 
upon  the  worn-out  soul,  to  be  conscious  that  the 
tired  nerves  are  being  renewed  with  the  strength  of 
the  Infinite  One;  to  know  that,  as  the  body  falls 
away,  the  soul  is  putting  on  its  robes  of  coronation, 
to  grow  young  as  we  grow  old.  "We  need  an  indu- 
bitable Fact,  whose  life  in  our  life  grows  clear  and 
strong"  with  the  succeeding  years,  and  stands  over 
against  the  changing  sky  as  a  very  pillar  of  divine 
assurance.  Jesus  Christ,  as  the  manifestation  of 
God,  comes  to  youth  and  middle  age  to-day  with  the 
promise — a  promise  verified  in  the  lives  of  men  and 
women  whose  gray  hairs  were  a  crown  of  glory — 
which  will  ever  so  incarnate  God  that  whatever 
storms  surge  against  our  faith  we  shall  always  be 
sure  of  the  fatherhood  of  the  All-Good  and  the 
All-Strong.    He  Himself  is  the  Divine  Voice  pierc- 


310    PATHS    TO    THE    CITY    OF    GOD 

ing  the  gale — "the  deeper  voice  across  the  storm" 
saying,  "all  is  well."  Jesus  Christ  is  also  the  mani- 
festation of  man.  He  comes  to  the  youth,  so  sure  to 
be  disappointed  in  many  men,  and  asks  to  so  walk 
in  His  visions,  that,  as  critical  age  comes  upon  the 
heart  who  has  once  trusted  Him,  you  and  I  shall 
always  see  humanity  at  its  divinest,  humanity  filled 
with  God,  and  believe  in  man.  Life  tends  to  be  frag- 
mentary and  to  fasten  upon  unworthy  aims.  Only 
the  continuous  presence  of  God  can  get  us  from  event 
to  event  with  blessing.  In  Christ  we  get  the  ideas  and 
aims  of  God,  ideas  and  aims  which  run  through  the 
first  yesterday  into  and  through  to-day  and  on  into 
forever. 

A  noble  past  is  a  sinless  past,  or  a  past  out  of 
which  tears  of  repentance  and  the  blood-drops  of 
Christ  have  washed  out  the  stains  of  wrong.  Great 
tasks  God  has  reserved  for  age's  trembling  hands — 
the  task  of  hopeful  waiting,  the  task  of  making 
youth  look  forward  to  age  without  sorrow.  Great 
revelations  come  to  age  alone — the  discovery  of  the 
meaning  of  human  life,  the  gathering  of  the  sunset 
tints  which  touch  only  life's  west  windows.  Jesus 
Christ  is  "the  same  yesterday,  to-day,  and  forever." 
Let  us  get  His  fadeless  youth  in  our  souls.  He  is 
the  light  of  the  world;  light  for  morning,  light  for 
noonday,  light  for  eventide. 

We  have  only  to  compare  Cicero  "De  Senectute" 
with  St.  Paul,  to  see  the  glory  of  Christian  old  age. 
Sin  pardoned,  passion  conquered,  hope  strengthened, 
and  heaven  at  hand!    Just  a  few  more  strokes  at 


A    GOOD    OLD    AGE  311 

the  oar,  a  little  more  sea  to  cleave  with  your  break- 
ing craft,  and  many  of  you  will  be  at  home.  It  is 
said  that  Columbus,  nearing  the  shores  of  the  new 
world,  believed  the  story  which  the  waves  and  the 
skies  brought  him,  that  land  was  not  far  away. 
Birds  came  near  and  floated  on  the  mild  air,  and  at 
last  perched  upon  the  masts  and  twittered  their 
praise  of  the  shore.  Berries  were  found  in  the  sea 
and  were  caught  up  from  the  waves  and  eaten  by 
the  happy  sailors.  Land  was  nigh.  This  is  a 
picture  of  Christian  old  age.  The  heavenly  shores 
are  near  enough,  so  that  the  rich  fruits  of  the  other 
world  are  within  reach  of  the  weary  mariner. 
Angels  of  hope  and  benediction  come  to  the  soul 
and  flutter  over  the  tired  life  and  ride  home  to  land 
with  the  creaking  old  ship.  May  God  help  us  all 
to  such  an  old  age  as  this ! 


THE   END 


